: Chooses to wear dirty clothes and avoid grooming.

Over coffee, they talked about everything and nothing, catching up on lost years. It was only when the conversation turned to their lives after high school that Chihiro began to sense the depth of Yuka's unhappiness. The successful career, the marriage that had seemed so perfect from afar, now sounded hollow, filled with obligations rather than desires.

Fans of literary fiction, philosophical novels (Camus, Dostoevsky), readers of Sayaka Murata ( Convenience Store Woman ) or Han Kang ( The Vegetarian ), and anyone interested in contemporary Japanese literature.

Heaven is narrated by an unnamed 14-year-old boy born with strabismus (a lazy eye). Because of his physical trait, his classmates subject him to relentless, creative, and brutal bullying. He accepts his torment as an unchangeable reality, enduring it in absolute silence.

: Kawakami refuses to offer easy answers. Kojima argues that their pain has a purpose and that a higher power (or "god") will give it meaning. The narrator, however, struggles to find any reason for his torment. The novel leaves this question achingly unresolved, reflecting the ambiguous nature of real-life trauma.