A subtle and intimate accounting of a daughter's final days with her mother, set amid the rush of Tokyo's red-light district.

Drawing on her own experiences as a hostess and adult film actor, Gifted -Suzumi Suzuki's first novel to be translated into English-offers a nuanced, frank, and intimate portrayal of the lives of a mother and daughter getting by (or not) in an industry rarely depicted authentically in literary fiction.
In the last days of her mother's life, a young woman living in Tokyo's red-light district is thrust into a split existence. By day, she negotiates her new role as caregiver of an abusive parent. By night, she drifts home from the hospital, goes out with other sex-workers, thinks about quitting smoking, and numbly remembers Eri, a friend who died the summer before. Her sensitivity to the details of her surroundings grounds an otherwise unstable world, one where each interaction requiresa subtle negotiation of economic and sexual power, and proximity rarely means intimacy or connection. Gifted was nominated for the 167th Akutagawa Prize in 2022.