The Cake Tree in the Ruins (Pushkin Collection)

The fact Nosaka can conjure up so much powerful emotion in a mere ten pages a pop is quite frankly magic. This is a heartbreaking exploration of the trauma of war, a collection of 12 stories that will inevitably break you, all set on the 15th August 1945 when Japan surrendered. I had to take a break between each one for something a little lighter as a palette cleanser and, whilst some tales are softened with a pinch of magical realism, others are painfully stark on the realism. The opening whale story remains my favourite, honestly I think that whale will haunt me to my dying day. As will the final story’s last paragraph.