From Sayaka Murata, the bestselling author of Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings, comes Vanishing World—a bold, offbeat novel set in a Japan where loving relationships between married couples are not just outdated, they’re taboo. In this future, all children are born through artificial insemination, and physical intimacy within marriage is seen as a disturbing relic of the past.
Amane, a quiet girl growing up under the shadow of this system, makes a shocking discovery: her parents conceived her the old-fashioned way. The horror of it never leaves her. She tries to live “correctly”—enters a proper sexless marriage, follows the rules—but desire still flickers, dangerously, in the margins of her life.
Desperate for purity, she and her husband relocate to a place called Paradise-Eden, a commune where all children are raised collectively and no one belongs to anyone. There, the body itself is being redesigned—men can now carry children in translucent artificial wombs, and kids are no longer named, just called “Kodomo-chan.”
It’s surreal. Unsettling. And somehow… oddly tender.
Murata doesn’t just imagine another world—she slices into ours, asking uncomfortable questions about intimacy, motherhood, and the systems we quietly accept. Vanishing World is weird, wise, and unforgettable.
If you’ve ever questioned what “normal” really means—or felt like the world wasn’t built with you in mind—this is your next read.
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