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Sayonara Bar
  • Published: 3 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9781473509566
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432

Sayonara Bar

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Extraordinary debut novel set in a hostess bar in Osaka, Japan. By the acclaimed author of THE INCARNATIONS

**Shortlisted for the Authors' Club First Novel Award and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize**

'Highly original . . . A major achievement by an exciting new author' Independent

'A beautifully written and far-reaching exploration of Japanese culture' Books of the Year, Independent

Mary, a graduate from England, has drifted into a job in a hostess lounge in Osaka. She works for the enigmatic Mama-san and spends her evenings flirting with rich Japanese salarymen, playing drinking games and singing in the karaoke booth. Mary is in love with Yuji, Mama-san's son. But Yuji's loyalty is to the Yakuza gangster for whom he works.

Watanabe, the introverted cook, watches Mary from the kitchen. He exists in his own manga-fuelled fantasy of the fourth dimension, and believes he can see into other people's souls. When he perceives the danger of Mary's growing obsession with Yuji, he resolves to protect her whatever the cost.

Mr Sato works for the Daiwa Trading Corporation. Obsessive overwork cannot cure the emptiness of his solitary life as a salaryman. Lured against his will to the Sayonara Bar by his boss, he finds himself returning there to escape his dead wife's ghost.

Edgy, sly, often very funny, SAYONARA BAR spins a kaleidoscopic, genre-crossing tale of people cut adrift in a globalized world.
  • Published: 3 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9781473509566
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432
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About the author

Susan Barker

Susan Barker is the acclaimed author of SAYONARA BAR, THE ORIENTALIST AND THE GHOST, THE INCARNATIONS and OLD SOUL. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages and have been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. THE INCARNATIONS was a New York Times Editors' Choice and Notable Book of the Year, a Kirkus Reviews Top Ten Book of the Year, and winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Born in London to an English father and a Chinese-Malaysian mother, Barker lived in Beijing for several years while researching and writing THE INCARNATIONS. She now lives in Manchester, where she is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
portrait photo of Susan Barker

Also by Susan Barker

Old Soul
The Incarnations
The Orientalist And The Ghost
See all

Praise for Sayonara Bar

A beautifully written and far-reaching exploration of Japanese culture from first-time novelist Susan Barker

Independent on Sunday

Barker has given it the pace and excitement of a thriller - or of the manga comics to which Watanabe is addicted. Funny, crisply written and engaging, Sayonora Bar offers sharp insights into some of the less palatable realities of life in 21st century Japan'

The Times

With dry humour and crisp observation, Barker conveys the inner chaos masked by the external regimens of a society where intimacy is contrived, and loyalty is strained. Japan has not, for a long time, been made to seem so accessible, or so remote

Literary Review

New author Susan Barker has set her edgy, sly debut in a hostess lounge

Elle Megazine

A stunningly eclectic debut. Original, often perplexing, always intriguing, Sayonara Bar is a showpiece of breathtaking new talent

Daily Record

Highly original ... A major achievement by an exciting new author.

Independent on Sunday

A fluid style and writes sentences reminiscent of Haruki Murakami...Barker's descriptions are spot on

JapanVisitor.com