The Night of Baba Yaga

A fierce mixed-race fighter develops a powerful attachment to the yakuza princess she’s been forced to protect in this explosive queer thriller: Kill Bill meets The Handmaiden meets Thelma and Louise.

Tokyo, 1979. Yoriko Shindo, a workhorse of a woman who has been an outcast her whole life, is kidnapped and dragged to the lair of the Naiki-kai, a branch of the yakuza. After she savagely fends off a throng of henchmen in an attempt to escape, Shindo is only permitted to live under one condition: that she will become the bodyguard and driver for Shoko Naiki, the obsessively sheltered daughter of the gang’s boss.

Eighteen-year-old Shoko, pretty and silent as a doll, has no friends, wears strangely old-fashioned clothes, and is naive in all matters of life. Originally disdaining her ward, Shindo soon finds herself far more invested in Shoko’s wellbeing than she ever expected. But every man around them is bloodthirsty and trigger-happy. Shindo doubts she and Shoko will survive much longer if nothing changes. Could there ever be a different life for two women like them?

Akira Otani’s English-language debut moves boldly through time and across gender, stretching the definitions and possibilities of each concept. Rendered in a gorgeous translation by International Booker-shortlisted Sam Bett, this lean, mean thriller proves that bonds forged in fire are unbreakable.

Akira Otani was born in Tokyo in 1981. Originally working at a games production company writing game scenarios, she gravitated to writing novels. She came out and wrote a collection of short stories about various female relationships, WE, WHO ARE NOT PERFECT, and YOUR AIM IS MY BODY ANYWAY, an essay collection of her columns based on her own philosophy aiming to free the female body from the stereotypes and prejudices of traditional society.

Sam Bett is a fiction writer and Japanese translator. His translation work has won the Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize and been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.