A startling novella from the heir to Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Garcia Marquez Trapped in Tokyo, left behind by a series of girlfriends, the narrator of Slow Boat sizes up his situation. His missteps, his violent rebellions, his tiny victories. But he is not a passive loser, content to accept all that fate hands him. He attempts one last escape to the edges of the city, holding the only safety net he has known - his dreams. Filled with lyrical longing and humour, Slow Boat captures perfectly the urge to get away and the necessity of finding yourself in a world which might never even be looking for you.

"Translator David Boyd brings the slight and endearing story into riffing, confessional English" - Wall Street Journal

"The story is elegant and compressed, an investigation into memory, its faults and the arbitrary markers that we set down to locate ourselves, and to form our perspective on the present" - TLS

"In this refreshing book, Furukawa proves to be an imaginative and captivating storyteller" - Publishers Weekly

"The prose in this short novel fizzes.. language is used in startling and unique ways. Even the puns work in translation" - Japan Times

"Not only readable but very enjoyable... bound to leave you engrossed in self-questioning" - The Japan Society