Under the Eye of the Big Bird Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025

Under the Eye of the Big Bird is an inventive, interconnected speculative novel by Japanese author Hiromi Kawakami, translated into English by Asa Yoneda. Set across a vast future in which humanity is approaching extinction, it follows communities that have adapted in unfamiliar and often unsettling ways to survive. The book moves across generations and distant time periods, imagining altered forms of family, birth, intimacy, memory, and human embodiment. Its characters inhabit isolated groups and confront experimental approaches to reproduction and survival, blurring boundaries between humans, animals, plants, and technology. Rather than presenting a conventional single-protagonist plot, Kawakami builds a mosaic of related stories that asks what humanity might become when its continued existence is uncertain. Originally published in Japanese in 2016, the English translation was published by Granta Books on 16 January 2025. The UK hardback edition is 288 pages with ISBN 9781803512358; the paperback ISBN is 9781803512365.