Reviewed by Jillian Naylor
In a world that is careening toward in vitro fertilization and clean, sexless family units, Amane is ashamed to have been born through copulation. Her mother has cursed her this way so that she may never be fully pure—she will always be a remnant of the animalistic history of mankind. As those around her reject tangible romance to make room for anime characters and spouses (roommates with whom they can raise children), Amane finds herself stuck falling in love and engaging in sexual intercourse.
Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Vanishing World is brimming with themes of loneliness, conformity, and surrealism, and complete with the off-kilter prose that makes Sayaka Murata’s works of speculative fiction so unique. The better half of Brave New World, reimagined and woman-led: Murata immerses her readers in a universe parallel to our own, characterized by its sterile, futuristic approach to reproduction and love. The novel transports the reader into an alternate version of modern-day Japan, in which reproduction through sex has been out of the norm for the better part of a century.
Murata begins with a short prologue of sorts, in which Amane’s boyfriend from many years past asks her: “Aren’t we kind of the opposite of Adam and Eve?”. While the rest of humanity seems to be returning to Paradise — rejecting sexual pleasure, becoming one with the rest of the world — Amane seems to be the last human left having sex. This out-of-context scene is an intentionally unusual note to start on, setting the reader up for what is to come: an incongruous world full of descriptions of love, intimacy, and sex so impersonal that they can feel disorienting.
The rest of the story is told in three parts. Part one depicts young Amane learning about love from her mother and then being exposed to the societal expectations of love and family. From her first character love (from the Other World, as Amane puts it), to her first time having intercourse, to the marital “incest” committed by her first husband—part one builds the world around Amane and cements her place within it. Part two shows her life as an adult with her second husband, watching as the world around her changes, moving further and further away from intimacy and ever closer to the end of “family” as she knows it. Part three explores an experimental city in which both men and women are impregnated through IVF and their near-identical, nameless children (all called “Kodomo-chan”, literally “child”, followed by a Japanese honorific for children) are raised communally by all the residents, now “Mother” to every child.
Murata is able to write the ordinary with such clinical detail that it becomes foreign, and Takemori’s English translation never fails at the work of rendering the original intent. Surreal in every sense of the word, Vanishing World is a full-body experience of a book. As a reader, you become engrossed by Amane’s dynamic life and the ever-changing opinions of the novel’s society. Alongside Amane as the world around her changes over the course of thirty years, the reader understands the isolation of living in a world that is purging itself of romantic love, intimacy, and understanding. In this novel, Murata returns to a traditionally Romantic understanding of science: there is no progress worth stripping the world of its humanity.
As always, Murata pushes the reader to consider the world around them through the absurdist lens her novels offer. Vanishing World questions the sterility of love—is a good love clean? Is there any way to quantify the goodness of love through the purity and ease of it? There are glimpses of commentary on the state of commodified love in Japanese popular culture—the carefully cultivated idol personalities and anime characters designed to generate romantic affection from the audience. The reader is made to question the market value of love and where the line between transaction and devotion lies.
Provocative and unpredictable in a way Murata has perfected, this book is a worthwhile read for anyone who enjoys surrealism, off-putting descriptions of sex, unconventional female leads, or any of Murata’s previously published works. If you want a short, strange book to read in one sitting this summer, this is it. Experience Vanishing World for yourself, now available for purchase at most book retailers in America!
Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, Translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori, New York, New York: Grove Press 2025, 240 pages, $28, hardcover