The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories

A housewife takes up bodybuilding and sees radical changes to her physiqueamp;mdash;which her workaholic husband fails to notice. A boy waits at a bus stop, mocking businessmen struggling to keep their umbrellas open in a typhoonamp;mdash;until an old man shows him that they hold the secret to flying. A woman working in a clothing boutique waits endlessly on a customer who won't come out of the fitting room-and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her husband's features are beginning to slide around his face-to match her own.

In these eleven stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien-and, through it, find a way to liberation. The Lonesome Bodybuilder is the English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearlessly inventive young writers.