The Thorn Puller

Winner of the Sakutaro Hagiwara Prize and the MurasakiShikibu Prize

Caught between two cultures, award-winning author Hiromi Ito tackles subjects like aging, death, and suffering with dark humor, illuminating the bittersweet joys of being alive.

The first novel to appear in English by award-winning author Hiromi Ito explores the absurdities, complexities, and challenges experienced by a womancaring for her two families: her husband and daughters in California and her agingparents in Japan. As the narrator shuttles back and forth between these twostarkly different cultures, she creates a powerful and entertaining narrativeabout what it means to live and die in a globalized society.



Ito has been described as a “shaman of poetry” because ofher skill in allowing the voices of others to flow through her. Here she enrichesher semi-autobiographical novel by channeling myriad voices drawn from Japanesefolklore, poetry, literature, and pop culture. The result is a genericchimera—part poetry, part prose, part epic—a unique, transnational, polyvocalmode of storytelling. One throughline is a series of memories associated withthe Buddhist bodhisattva Jizo, who helps to remove the “thorns” of human suffering.