Weird Girls - The Diving Pool

The VINTAGE CLASSICS WEIRD GIRLS series ventures into the dark heart of the uncanny with disturbing, and disturbed, protagonists who dare to defy the norm. Bold, deviant, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool - sparking an unspoken infatuation that draws out darker possibilities.

A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, but rather than a story of growth the diary reveals a more sinister tale of greed and repulsion.

Driven by nostalgia, a woman visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo. There she finds an isolated world shadowed by decay, haunted by absent students and the disturbing figure of the crippled caretaker.

Dive into this triptych of psychological horror stories with themes of Japanese femininity, loneliness, and societal alienation.

About the Author

Yoko Ogawa has won every major Japanese literary award. Her works include The Diving Pool, The Housekeeper and the Professor, Hotel Iris and Revenge. Her novel The Memory Police was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.

About the Translator

Stephen Snyder is a translator and professor of Japanese Studies at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. He has translated works by Kenzaburo Oe, Ryu Murakami, and Miri Yu, among others. His translation of Yoko Ogawa’s Hotel Iris was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011.

Dimensions: 12.9 x 1.1 x 19.8 cm