The Woman in the Purple Skirt

Everyone in the area knows the woman who always wears a purple skirt. Local lore says that two sightings of her on the same day bring luck and a third brings bad luck; children dare each other to tap her shoulder. Every week she picks up a cream bun from the shops and lingers over it on her usual park bench, and she glides through crowds without ever brushing against anyone. The narrator watches her closely, longs to be her friend, and quietly steers her toward a cleaning job at the hotel where she works herself. There the supposed oddball proves good at the work and is soon accepted by her colleagues as a person with a name of her own, while the narrator goes on calling her only by the colour of her skirt.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

158 pages in the original

First published

2019 by Asahi Shimbun Publications

Author's age

39 when first published

ISBN

9784022516121 (original)

9780143136026 (Penguin Books, United States)

9780571364688 (Faber & Faber, United Kingdom)

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