Territory of Light

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

It is Spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year, as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light, streaming through the windows, so bright you have to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness; becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go, and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become.

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.

'There is something deeply seductive about being drawn into the intimate thoughts of a woman who otherwise would tell them to no one. [ . . . ] This portrait of an imperfect mother who strives to provide a good life for her child feels painfully relevant.' Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Review: 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