Vanishing World

Beskrivelse

In a Japan where sex between married couples has disappeared and all children are born through artificial insemination, Amane navigates a society that feels alien and unsettling. From the acclaimed author Sayaka Murata comes a bold and imaginative story that explores this strange new world.

An inventive look at a society transformed by changing attitudes toward sex and reproduction.

Sayaka Murata, known for her unique insights into societal oddities in works like Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings, takes readers into an alternative Japan with Vanishing World. Here, traditional sex between married couples has vanished, replaced by artificial insemination as the sole method of childbirth since the mid-twentieth century.

Amane grows up horrified to discover that her parents conceived her through "copulation," a practice now seen as bizarre and taboo. She struggles to escape the indoctrination of this outdated system, even as her intense attractions to both anime characters and real people reveal a powerful sexual energy.

As an adult, Amane is in a sexless marriage with her husband, Saku, since sex between married partners is as forbidden as incest. Together, they move to a mysterious place called Experiment City, or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised collectively and everyone assumes the role of Mother. In this world, men can become pregnant through artificial wombs that hang outside their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, known only as "Kodomo-chan."

Is this new society the key to freeing Amane from her sense of strangeness, or will it deepen the mysteries of her existence?

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