Outsider

Tokyo, 2017

Weeks from a birthday that will see her older than her mother ever was, Antoinette seeks two One—how to explain her Master’s thesis on light as memory. And two—was her mother’s death an accident or a suicide? Then a long-lost pen-pal returns to her life, propelling her closer to the truth. Kyou, the top star of a gender-bending nabe bar, would sooner die than move into management. She needs an out, she needs cash and, most importantly, she needs an identity. As an unregistered mukoseki, she is a legal anomaly. Officially, Kyou doesn’t exist. Their searches for identity intertwine with the lives of a video-game obsessed businessman and a writer who refuses to speak. Across Japan and down to New Zealand, from neon-lit alleys to tiny islands, their journey towards the truth is as tangled as their pasts. Fact and fable blur together in a rich tapestry that ultimately explores what it is to be human. For fans of Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being and Ali Smith's How to be Both , Jade du Preez's Outsider is a rich, stylish, engrossing read that convincingly blurs the boundaries between fact and fable.