Travel with a Writer

A novel of friendship and misreading that deciphers Tokyo’s hidden social codes.

Emily Itami’s Costa-shortlisted Fault Lines transported readers to Tokyo. Now join her there.

Tokyo: quaint and vast, majestic and baffling. Unspoiled parks and roiling tourist traps, artisanal delicacies and millions of vending machines, highly efficient commuter trains packed with snoozing salarymen.

Can an outsider—or even a native who left—ever hope to keep up?

When Anna reconnects with her childhood friend Tsubasa after years apart, they strike up a wide-ranging correspondence. They have much to tell about their lives and memories and dreams, but also about the city they once shared.

As their connection deepens, Tokyo’s codes and customs and unspoken rules unfold in revealing lessons: how politeness conceals a world of meaning; how falling asleep during a business meeting can signal exemplary commitment; how alienating vastness can give way, without warning, to intimacy.

Brought to charismatic life by novelist Emily Itami, Tokyo is funny, tender, and gently disorienting: an epistolary love story and a brisk primer in the complex etiquette of a city that reveals and withholds in equal measure.