The Third Love

A time-bending story of love, desire, and destiny that sways between Japan's past and its present--from a courtesan of Yoshiwara in Edo to a serving lady of the Heian period to a wife and mother in the twenty-first century--by one of our most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists

Having married her childhood sweetheart, Riko now finds herself trapped in a relationship soured by infidelity. One day, she runs into her old friend Mr Takaoka, who offers friendship, love, and an unusual escape: he teaches her the trick of living inside her dreams.

Now, each night, she sinks into another life: first as a high-ranking courtesan in the seventeenth century, and then as a serving lady to a princess in the late Middle Ages. As she experiences desire and heartbreak in the past, so Riko comes to reconsider her life as a twenty-first-century woman--as a wife, as a mother, and as a lover--and to ask herself whether, after loving her husband and loving Mr Takaoka, she is ready for her third great love.

Author: Hiromi Kawakami
Publisher: Soft Skull
Published: 10/21/2025
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.35h x 5.59w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781593768058


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/25/2025
Foreword 08/25/2025
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2025

About the Author
HIROMI KAWAKAMI was born in Tokyo in 1958. Her first novel, Kamisama (God), was published in 1994. In 1996, she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for "Hebi o Fumu" ("A Snake Stepped On"), and in 2001, she won the Tanizaki Prize for her novel Sensei no Kaban (Strange Weather in Tokyo), which became an international bestseller. Strange Weather in Tokyo was short-listed for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Kawakami has contributed to editions of Granta in both the U.K. and Japan and is one of Japan's most popular contemporary novelists. Her previous novel in English translation, Under the Eye of the Big Bird, was short-listed for the International Booker Prize.

TED GOOSSEN taught Japanese literature and film at York University in Toronto. He is the general editor of The Oxford Book of Short Stories, the co-editor of the literary journal Monkey, and has published translations of Hiromi Kawakami, Yoko Ogawa and Naoya Shiga, among others. He translated Haruki Murakami's Wind/Pinball and The Strange Library, and co-translated (with Philip Gabriel) Men Without Women and Killing Commendatore.