Heaven

The fourteen-year-old unnamed narrator lives a lonely life with his stepmother, while his father is mostly absent. He is relentlessly bullied by his classmates due to a misalignment of his eyes. Instead of fighting back, he resigns himself and suffers in silence. One day, he finds a message in his pencil case: "We belong to the same kind." More messages follow, and suddenly there is someone asking him about his favorite color, his favorite food, and commenting on the weather. It soon becomes clear that the messages are from his classmate Kojima, who is also being bullied. The two teenagers find solace in each other's company, but their friendship does not go unnoticed by their tormentors. Complex, gripping, and philosophical - with her novel "Heaven," Mieko Kawakami undertakes a literary tour de force, telling a story of loneliness and exclusion, of violence and helplessness, but also of friendship, hope, and the courage of the desperate.