Sisters in Yellow: A Novel | Mieko Kawakami, Laurel Taylor, Hitomi Yoshio

Professional Review

Kawakami (All the Lovers in the Night) unfurls a remarkable noir-tinged tale of female desperation. The story opens in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when narrator Hana, a single 40-year-old who works at a Tokyo deli counter, stumbles upon a web article about a woman named Kimiko, who once played a pivotal role in her life. Now 60, Kimiko has been accused of imprisoning a much younger woman in her home and assaulting her for 15 months. From there, the novel jumps back 25 years, to when a 15-year-old Hana is living with her often absent mother, Ai, a bar hostess in suburban Tokyo who’s prone to disappearing with boyfriends. Kimiko, an old drinking pal of Ai’s, steps in to fill the void while Ai is gone for a month, stocking the fridge with Hana’s favorite foods and charming her peers. Two years later, when they meet again, Hana leaves home and moves in with Kimiko, and together they open a small bar, Lemon. But Kimiko’s past and ties to Tokyo’s criminal underworld soon threaten Hana’s fragile stability. As the story hurtles toward chilling revelations in the present, Kawakami masterfully builds tension through her portrayal of Hana’s struggle to claw her way upward in a society where, as a runaway minor with no bank account or ID, she is nearly invisible. The author scales new heights with this gripping and propulsive novel. —Publishers Weekly

Review

• A New Yorker Best Book of 2026 So Far • A Los Angeles Times Selection for Heavy-Hitting New Books for Springtime • A CrimeReads Selection for Best Crime Novels, Mysteries, and Thrillers of March 2026 •

"Gritty, noirish, almost Richard Price-like. . . . The book displays a gift for confident . . . storytelling, and the details pile up convincingly. . . . I have a feeling I won’t forget Hana, perpetually running up life’s down escalator, willing to try anything to scrape together a little happiness." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"Engrossing." —The New Yorker

"An absorbing story about teenagers on the margins of society struggling for a sense of control." —Vulture

"Kawakami plays along the razor’s edge of how sisterhood can be a salve or the last damning thing that finally breaks your heart. . . . If you’re looking for a read that really sticks with you, Sisters in Yellow is a fine showcase of the signature bittersweet linger Kawakami has so mastered that makes her one of the finest fiction writers working today." —Conde Nast Traveler

"I will take a novel like this any day over a meticulously planned, overly predictable thriller. . . . Sisters in Yellow is an enjoyable 12-episode season." —Boston Globe

"A psychological thriller. . . . [Kawakami is] minutely attentive to Hana’s surroundings throughout the novel, as is Hana herself, but what really matters are the women around her, whom Hana idealizes to her great detriment. . . . The possibility of freedom can still glimmer throughout Kawakami’s noir nightmare—as it can in traditional family life.” —The Atlantic

"Painfully yet exquisitely moving. . . . A captivating story about youth, accountability, and female bonds. . . . While Kawakami’s Sisters in Yellow explores what transpires when people leave the places they once called home, it also depicts the delicate burden of pain and joy found when lives intertwine, including through encounters that remain with us for a lifetime.” —Words Without Borders

"A fast-paced story of survival." —The Wall Street Journal

"Kawakami wowed the literary world with her critically acclaimed Breasts and Eggs, and now with Sisters in Yellow she proves the same skill and versatility within the crime genre. In what I already predict as one of the best crime novels of the decade, a group of young women fall under the charismatic influence of a flighty scammer and fall deeper and deeper into the trap of criminalized poverty. Epic, brutal, and stunning." —CrimeReads

"Sisters in Yellow is a fascinating girl’s-eye view of what it means to grow up in Japan without wealth, and the moral (and physical) sacrifices you must make to attain it. . . . Kawakami draws back [Japan's] cosy façade to reveal the grimy reality underneath—and she does it with consummate style. With Sisters in Yellow, she proves she is still the most exciting Japanese novelist at work today." —The Times (London)

"An intimate and striking novel of poverty and loneliness." —Book Riot

"Kawakami’s novel is about the painful realities of a rapidly-modernizing world, the difficulty of creating community on the fringes, and the ways we struggle to care for each other and ourselves. . . . In Mieko Kawakami’s hands this is . . . a masterpiece." —Lit Hub

"A pacy story of friendship, longing, and betrayal." —Electric Lit

"Kawakami unfurls a remarkable noir-tinged tale of female desperation. . . . As the story hurtles toward chilling revelations in the present, Kawakami masterfully builds tension. . . . The author scales new heights with this gripping and propulsive novel." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Part coming-of-age novel, part crime story, part commentary on poverty, responsibility, relationships and survival, Sisters in Yellow asks uncomfortable questions and gives uncomfortable answers, burrowing deep into the psyches of not only its protagonist but also its potential audience." —BookPage (starred review)

"Every scene in this incisive, relentless tale of survival and the stunting of lives is mesmerizing in its intensity." —Booklist

MIEKO KAWAKAMI is the acclaimed author of the internationally best-selling novel Breasts and Eggs, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of Time’s Best 10 Books of 2020. Her other novels, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, include Heaven, shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, and All the Lovers in the Night, a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. In 2024, Sisters in Yellow won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Her books, translated into over forty languages, are known for their insights into the female body, and philosophical questions surrounding gender, class, and ethics in modern society. Born in Osaka, Kawakami lives in Tokyo, Japan.

LAUREL TAYLOR is a translator, poet, and researcher. She has translated works by Kaori Fujino, Minae Mizumura, Shibasaki Tomoka, and Aoko Matsudo, among others.

HITOMI YOSHIO is the translator of Natsuko Imamura's This Is Amiko, Do You Copy? and the co-translator of Mieko Kawakami's Ashes of Spring.