Territory of Light (Little Clothbound Classics)

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.

Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.

Territory of Light is the radiant story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her two-year-old daughter, in her first year of separation from her husband. At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Territory of Light is a novel of abandonment, desire and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time, and remains one of Yuko Tsushima's most beloved works.

'Wonderfully poetic ... extraordinary freshness ... a Virginia Woolf quality' Margaret Drabble

Reviews

Tsushima evades any label, her fiction transcends gender to focus on the existential loneliness that is at the heart of humanity.—Kris Kosaka, Japan Times

Wonderfully poetic ... extraordinary freshness ... a Virginia Woolf quality—Margaret Drabble, BBC Radio 3

Spiky, atmospheric and intimate, filled with moments of strangeness that linger in the mind—The Spectator

In this short, powerful novel lurk the joy and guilt of single parents everywhere—Guardian

This exquisite and poignant novel . . . will resonate with single mothers always and everywhere—Shami Chakrabarti

An extraordinary book . . . cool analytic intelligence propelled by sudden eruptions of passion—Lisa Appignanesi

An astonishing and exquisite masterpiece about love, motherhood, female independence, and the restoration of a damaged family. Yuko Tsushima is an unforgettable name alongside great masters like Virginia Woolf, Alice Munro and Elizabeth Strout—J. M. Lee, author of The Investigation