Abstract

A near future where all mental illnesses are under control. A ten-building hospital was built on a Mars hillside in an arrangement resembling the Kabbalah’s tree of life. Sonenstein Hospital―the only mental hospital on Mars, where his late father once worked. Kazuki, a young doctor, returns to his hometown after being forced to leave his university hospital on Earth and is assigned to a hospital in this harsh land, where medicine, beds, and staff are in short supply. And with his homecoming, the hidden gears began to move.

This is the first full-length book by Yusuke Miyauchi, the winner of the Nihon SF Taisho Award, the Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Newcomer Award, and the Yukio Mishima Prize. It is an unprecedented work, set on Mars and dealing with the history of psychiatry, and has been highly acclaimed by Miyuki Miyabe and other writers and book reviewers. After its release, Miyauchi continued his remarkable genre-transcending writing, receiving a Naoki Prize nomination for Ato wa no to nare yamato nadeshiko (What Happens Afterwards Is of No Concern to the Japanese Beauty), his second Akutagawa Award nomination for “Direi efekuto” (Delay Effect), and the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists for Toi takoku de hyonto shinuruya (Dying a Quick Death in a Faraway Land).

Author’s Information

Born in Tokyo in 1979. Lived in New York until 1992 and then graduated from Waseda University with a Bachelor of Arts degree. While at university, he was a member of the Waseda Mystery Club. After wandering around India and Afghanistan, he took Japan’s professional mahjong exam and passed it as an alternate, but his turn did not come, and he became a programmer. He submitted “Banjo no yoru” (Night on the Board), a story about the game of Go, to the 1st Sogen SF Short Story Prize, and although it did not win, it did receive a special citation by selection committee member Masaki Yamada. Miyauchi debuted as a writer when this story was included in the anthology Genshoku no sozoryoku (The Imagination of Primary Colors). Also, his very first collection of stories, which shares the same title as that short story, was nominated for the 147th Naoki Prize and won the 33rd Nihon SF Taisho Award. In addition, at the time of its inclusion in this collection, the story appeared in the Best Japanese Short Story reference nominee list for the 44th Seiun Award. His second collection, Yohanesuburugu no tenshi tachi (Johannesburg Angels), was nominated for the 149th Naoki Prize and won the 34th Nihon SF Taisho Special Award. In 2013, he received the 6th Akiko Ikeda Memorial “I, that is, Nobody” Award. In 2017, he won the 38th Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Newcomer Award for Kanojo ga esupa datta koro (When She Had Extra-sensory Perception) and the 30th Yukio Mishima Prize for Kaburu no sono (The Garden of Kabul). Ato wa no to nare yamato nadeshiko (What Happens Afterwards Is of No Concern to the Japanese Beauty), published in that same year, won the 49th Seiun Award in the Japanese Feature-Length category and was also nominated for the 157th Naoki Prize. His recent books include Kakushite kanojo wa utage de kataru: Meiji tanbiha suiricho (Thus She Speaks at the Banquet: A Meiji Aesthetic School Mystery).