Goodnight Tokyo

Translated by Haydn Trowell

A symphony of interconnected lives that offers a compelling reflection on life in modern-day metropolises at the intersection of isolation and intimacy.

Matsui is the driver of a taxi the colour of the night sky. Every night between the hours of 1 am and 4.30 am, Matsui guides his taxi around the streets of Tokyo, collecting passengers and their stories.

Seen through the eyes of a cast of colourful characters, Goodnight Tokyo takes the reader on an intimate journey around Tokyo after dark, when Tokyo's eccentrics and insomniacs emerge, and a small grain of madness begins to germinate in the city's night air. Confessions of intimacy and loneliness merge with the surreal: the funeral of an old telephone, the flea-market in which objects are bartered for that don't actually exist.

Told over a number of nights - and punctuated by Matsui's dawn arrival at his favourite canteen for a plate of their famous ham and eggs - Yoshida weaves a web of stories that prove to be intimately and compellingly connected.