Tokyo Ueno Station meets Breasts and Eggs, a literary thriller about the intergenerational effects of radiation on the mind, body, and recorded history of three generations of women in Japan.
Nine years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, Japan is preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. An unnamed narrator wakes up in her grandmother's body, unable to recall her past. Across the country, the elderly begin to hear voices emanating from black stones, which compel them to behave in strange and unpredictable ways. The voices are a symptom of a disease called "trinity."
As details about the disease come to light, we encounter a thread of linked histories-the discovery of radiation, the race to develop nuclear weapons in the US and Japan, the subsequent birth of nuclear energy, and the disaster in Fukushima. These threads become intertwined in the lead-up to a terrorist attack at the site of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
A speculative novel unpacking the implications of the past and continued effects of radiation, Trinity, Trinity, Trinity follows the lives of three generations of women connected by blood, history, and nuclear power as embodied by the relay torch, a symbol of Prometheus's fire. Erika Kobayashi is a novelist and visual artist based in Tokyo. Her novel Breakfast with Madame Curie, published in 2014 by Shueisha, was shortlisted for both the Mishima and the Akutagawa Prize. Trinity, Trinity, Trinity is her latest novel.
