Dilemmas of Working Women : Stories

Now offered in translation for the first time, this collection featuring women navigating societal expectations (and their small rebellions) is a classic.Boston Globe

A spiky, edgy collection of five sly yet sensitive stories spotlighting clear-eyed and difficult women who are navigating their identities as workers and women in contemporary Japana feminist, anti-capitalist modern classic published outside Asia and in English for the first time.

The Dilemmas of Working Women is Fumio Yamamotos darkly witty look at modern Japanese women who are ambivalent about their lives and jobs. In Naked, a woman whos simultaneously lost her business and her husband finds that it is surprisingly comfortable to stay at home sewing stuffed animals, even if it makes her a loser in the eyes of society. In Planarian, a young woman recovering from breast cancer tells her friends and boyfriend that she would prefer to be the titular worm to organically regenerate her body. Each of these spiky womenas well as the three other protagonists in this groundbreaking workchafes against social expectations that equate work with worth and demand women squeeze into the confining and sometimes dehumanizing role of employee in a world built by and for men.

First published in Japan in 2000, The Dilemmas of Working Women struck a nerve with Japanese readers and became a bestselling literary sensation, selling nearly half a million copies and winning the prestigious Naoki Prize in Literature. A quarter of a century later, this brilliant modern classicavailable for the first time outside Asia and in Englishremains deliciously funny and astonishingly relevant.

Translated from the Japanese by Brian Bergstrom