Under the Eye of the Big Bird

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions an Earth where humans are nearing extinction, and rewrites our understanding of reproduction, ecology, evolution, artificial intelligence, communal life, creation, love, and the future of humanity

In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of "Mothers." Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings--but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.

Unfolding over fourteen interconnected episodes spanning geological eons, at once technical and pastoral, mournful and utopic, Under the Eye of the Big Bird presents an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it.


About the Author
HIROMI KAWAKAMI was born in Tokyo in 1958. Her international bestseller novel Strange Weather in Tokyo was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Her latest novel Under the Eye of the Big Bird was shortlisted for The 2025 International Booker Prize.