Critically acclaimed, and winner of both the Kawabata and the Tanizaki awards, Yuko Tsushima lacerates with wisdom and uncomfortable truths. Translated by Geraldine Harcourt in 1988, "The Shooting Gallery" is a compilation of Tsushima's early short stories, largely based on her experiences as a single mother.

Travel with the weary mother of two boys as she finds strength at a run-down, touristy shooting gallery in the title story; explore the jealousy within the supernatural realm in "The Chrysanthemum Beetle"; or venture into the magical realist world of a city park that harbors the abandoned and unwanted in "The Silent Traders."

The Shooting Gallery, by Yuko Tsushima, Translated by Geraldine Harcourt.138 pagesNew Directions, Fiction.

Tsushima's multilayered perspective creates a dreamily textured landscape that only sharpens the realistic perspectives of her characters. Here, one mother purposely falls into a daydream to escape the demands of motherhood: "one day my back will sprout a pair of lance-shaped wings, which will begin to beat, my body will visibly expand, and when the metamorphosis is complete I'll be a dragon that ascends, spiraling to heaven."

These are stories that cut deeply, and remain etched into your memory long after the last page.

Largely billed as a feminist writer, Tsushima evades any label, her fiction transcends gender to focus on the existential loneliness that is at the heart of humanity.

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