The Dilemmas of Working Women: Stories by Fumio Yamamoto (Hardcover) (PREORDER)

Fiction - Short Stories - Literary - Feminist - Psychological - Humorous - Dark Humor - World Literature - Japan

RELEASE DATE: 8/12/2025  (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE AND ARRIVE 1-2 DAYS AFTER THE RELEASE DATE)

Translated from the Japanese by: Brian Bergstrom

A spiky, edgy collection of five sly yet sensitive stories spotlighting clear-eyed and “difficult” women who are navigating their identities as workers and women in contemporary Japan—a feminist, anti-capitalist modern classic published outside Asia and in English for the first time.

The Dilemmas of Working Women is Fumio Yamamoto’s darkly witty look at modern Japanese women who are ambivalent about their lives and jobs. In “Naked,” a woman who’s simultaneously lost her business and her husband finds that it is surprisingly comfortable to stay at home sewing stuffed animals, even if it makes her a “loser” in the eyes of society. In “Planarian,” a young woman recovering from breast cancer tells her friends and boyfriend that she would prefer to be the titular worm to organically regenerate her body. Each of these spiky women—as well as the three other protagonists in this groundbreaking work—chafes against social expectations that equate work with worth and demand women squeeze into the confining and sometimes dehumanizing role of employee in a world built by and for men.

First published in Japan in 2000, The Dilemmas of Working Women struck a nerve with Japanese readers and became a bestselling literary sensation, selling nearly half a million copies and winning the prestigious Naoki Prize in Literature. A quarter of a century later, this brilliant modern classic—available for the first time outside Asia and in English—remains deliciously funny and astonishingly relevant.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Fumio Yamamoto (1962-2021) was a Japanese writer of novels and essays. Her books include Loveaholic, which won the 1999 Yoshikawa Eiji New Writer's Prize, and the collection The Dilemmas of Working Women, which won the prestigious Naoki Prize in Literature and became a bestselling phenomenon.

TRANSLATOR BIO: 

Brian Bergstrom is a lecturer and translator who has lived in Chicago, Kyoto, and Yokohama. His writing and translations have appeared in publications including Granta, Aperture, Lit Hub, Mechademia, Japan Forum, positions: asia critique, Queer: A Collection of LGBTQ Writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday, and The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. He translated Erika Kobayashi's novel Trinity, Trinity, Trinity (2022) and story collection Sunrise: Radiant Stories (2023) with Astra House, the former winning the 2022 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. His latest translation is Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito (W&N & Astra House, 2024). He is currently based in Montréal, Canada.

"Here are people caught between loss and regeneration. The struggles of their forlorn hearts are depicted with a light, graceful touch. There will come a point in all of our lives when we will need Fumio Yamamoto's writing." -- Saou Ichikawa, author of the International Booker Prize-longlisted Hunchback

"The Dilemmas of Working Women is a delight. With acute insight and sly humor, Fumio Yamamoto depicts the lives of modern Japanese women in all their complexity. The characters, in their quirky idiosyncrasies, are deeply familiar; their stoicisms, heartbreaking. A colloquial and breezy translation that does not read as such." -- Yoon Choi, award-winning author of Skinship

"Witty, wise and thought-provoking, these darkly comic stories portray five unique women as they deal with the societal pressures that come with being a woman in their world." -- Cecelia Ahern, bestselling author of P.S. I Love You

"What an engaging, witty, and unique book. So brilliantly written that I kept trying to memorize sentences in order to repeat them to people later. What a win for the English language that we're finally getting to experience Yamamoto's inimitable voice." -- Roxy Dunn, author of As Young as This