Outsider

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Tokyo 2017</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Weeks from a birthday that will see her older than her mother ever was Antoinette seeks two answers: </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>One-how to explain her Master's thesis on light as memory.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>And two-was her mother's death an accident or a suicide?</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Then a long-lost pen-pal returns to her life propelling her closer to the truth.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Kyou the top star of a gender-bending nabe bar would sooner die than move into management. She needs an out she needs cash and most importantly she needs an identity. As an unregistered mukoseki she is a legal anomaly.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Officially Kyou doesn't exist.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Their searches for identity intertwine with the lives of a video-game obsessed businessman and a writer who refuses to speak. Across Japan and down to New Zealand from neon-lit alleys to tiny islands their journey towards the truth is as tangled as their pasts.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Fact and fable blur together in a rich tapestry that ultimately explores what it is to be human.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>For fans of Ruth Ozeki's</span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> A Tale for the Time Being</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> and Ali Smith's </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>How to be Both</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Jade du Preez's </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Outsider</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is a rich engrossing study in art culture identity and the complexity of being human.</span></p>