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The Shut Ins

The Shut Ins

by Katherine Brabon
Paperback
Publication Date: 02/07/2021
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On order from our Australian supplier to our Sydney warehouse.

This backorder is generally sent within 120 days.

Online tracking is available for this item via Australia Post.

From the winner of the Australian/Vogel's Literary Award, this tour-de-force explores loneliness and desire, the peril and beauty of solitude - and our need for connection.

Mai and Hikaru went to school together in the city of Nagoya, until Hikaru disappeared when they were eighteen.

It is not until ten years later, when Mai runs into Hikaru's mother, Hiromi Sato, that she learns Hikaru has become a hikikomori, a recluse unable to leave his bedroom for years. In secret, Hiromi Sato hires Mai as a 'rental sister', to write letters to Hikaru and encourage him to leave his room.

Mai has recently married J, a devoted salaryman with conservative ideas about the kind of wife Mai will be. The renewed contact with her old school friend Hikaru stirs Mai's feelings of invisibility within her marriage. She is frustrated with her life and knows she will never fulfill J's obsession with the perfect wife and mother.

What else is there for Mai to do but to disappear herself?

ISBN:
9781760879747
9781760879747
Category:
Contemporary fiction
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
02-07-2021
Language:
English
Publisher:
ALLEN & UNWIN
Country of origin:
Australia
Pages:
256
Dimensions (mm):
234x153mm

'A compelling story about isolation, duty, desire, fear and escape. As each character in The Shut-Ins feels increasingly trapped by societal pressure, they explore the possibility of retreating to some indefinable, unknowable place. The Shut Ins will appeal to fans of thoughtful literary fiction with a touch of otherworldliness, such as Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah and Earthlings by Sayaka Murata.'
- Bookseller & Publisher

'Not only is The Shut Ins a compelling story about hikikomori, those who seek absolute isolation from society, and those who orbit them in their reclusion, it is also a profound exploration of loneliness, solitude, and that peculiar, ineffable yearning for inner or unconscious worlds; the chimeric 'other side'. Katherine Brabon is a precise and contemplative writer, her prose capable of intense, almost-heady evocation. I will read everything she writes.'
- Hannah Kent, bestselling author of Burial Rites and The Good People

'Brabon's intellectual and emotional knowledge, and her plainspoken yet spellbinding prose come together in a mesmerising work of art.'
- Mireille Juchau, bestselling author of The World Without Us

Katherine Brabon

Katherine Brabon was born in Melbourne in 1987 and grew up in Woodend, Victoria.

The Memory Artist is her first novel and won the 2016 The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award.

Our Australian supplier has this title on order. You can place a backorder for this title now and we will ship it to you when it becomes available. 

While we are unable to provide a delivery estimate, most backorders will be delivered within 120 days. If we are informed by our supplier that the title is no longer available during this time, we will cancel and refund you for this item.  Likewise, if no delivery estimate has been provided within 120 days, we will contact our supplier for an update.  If there is still no delivery estimate we will then cancel the item and provided you with a refund.

If we are able to secure you a copy of the title, our supplier will despatch it to our Sydney warehouse.  Once received we make sure it is in perfect condition and then despatch it to you via the Australia Post eParcel service, which includes online tracking.  You will receive a shipping notice from us when this occurs.

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