Lit in Translation

Sympathy Tower Tokyo

東京都同情塔 · Tōkyōto dōjōtō

Rie Qudan (九段理江, born 1990)

Translated by Jesse Kirkwood

English editions

In English

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In an alternative Japan where Zaha Hadid's national stadium was built and the creed of tolerance has seeped into everything, central Tokyo is to get a new prison: Sympathy Tower Tokyo, a high-rise where offenders are promised an easy, comfortable existence. The architect Sara Makina, competing to design it, cannot feel tolerant toward criminals and cannot swallow the hollow name, and she is torn between what the job demands and what she believes, even as she pushes energetically toward the future. She is bothered too by the way soft foreign loanwords crowd out plain Japanese ones, in a world where generative AI is part of daily life. Beside her is Takuto, who begins to see that an AI cannot help him tell the life of someone he loves.

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About the book

Form
Novel
Length
143 pages in the original
Genres
Speculative, Satire (assigned by AI)
Set in
Japan
First published
2023 by Shinchosha
Author's age
33 when first published
ISBN

9784103555117 (original)

9781668094129 (Summit Books, United States)

9781405972062 (Penguin Books, United Kingdom)

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