Ms Ice Sandwich

A boy is obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches. He goes to the supermarket almost every day, just so he can look at her face. She is beautiful to him, & he calls her "Ms Ice Sandwich", and endlessly draws her portrait. But the boy's friend hears about this hesitant adoration, & suddenly everything changes. His visits to Ms Ice Sandwich stop, & with them the last hopes of his childhood.

A moving & surprisingly funny tale of growing up and learning how to lose, Ms Ice Sandwich is Mieko Kawakami at her very best.

Tender, warm, yet unsentimental, Ms Ice Sandwich is a story about new starts, parents who have departed, & the importance of saying goodbye.

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Mieko Kawakami was born in Osaka in 1976. Her second novella, Breasts & Eggs (2008), won the Akutagawa Prize & has been translated into Norwegian, Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean & more. She has published many books, including novels, short stories, essays, & prose poems. In 2016, she was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young Japanese Novelists.

Louise Heal Kawai was born in Manchester, but has been a resident of Japan for about twenty-five years, & a translator of Japanese literature for the past ten. Her translations include the bestselling memoir Yakuza Moon by Shoko Tendo, the ground-breaking feminist novel by Taeko Tomioka, Building Waves, & A Quiet Place by the mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto. Ms Ice Sandwich is her second Mieko Kawakami translation.