Territory of Light (1979) is the luminous story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her three-year-old daughter. Its twelve, stand-alone fragments follow the first year of the narrator's separation from her husband. The novel is full of light, sometimes comforting and sometimes dangerous: sunlight streaming through windows, dappled light in the park, distant fireworks, dazzling floodwater, desaturated streetlamps and mysterious explosions. The seemingly artless prose is beautifully patterned: the cumulative effect is disarmingly powerful and bright after-images remain in your mind for a long time afterwards.
