# The Summer House - Paperback

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by **Masashi Matsuie** (Author), **Margaret Mitsutani** (Translator)

**This prize-winning debut novel offers a compelling, insightful portrait of modern Japan through a group of architects competing to design a major new building in Tokyo.**

Tōru Sakanishi is a recent university graduate who joins the prestigious Murai Office, a small architecture firm founded by Shunsuke Murai, former student of Frank Lloyd Wright. A sensitive and observant narrator, Sakanishi is captivated by the artistic quality and careful consideration the Murai Office shows to each of its designs.

As the sweltering summer months approach, the Murai Office migrates from Tokyo to Kita-Asama, a mountain village and artists' colony whose heyday has passed. There, this small team of architects, including two women who Sakanishi is clumsily attracted to, set out to design the National Library of Modern Literature, competing against a rival firm that snaps up one government project after the next.

Beautifully translated by National Book Award-winner Margaret Mitsutani, _The Summer House_ is a character-driven story with prose that highlights the natural beauty of Japan, the ingenuity of architecture, and the clashing of modernity and tradition.

### Author Biography

**Masashi Matsuie** began his literary career as a fiction editor for the Shinchosha Publishing Company, where he worked with writers such as Yoko Ogawa, Banana Yoshimoto, and Haruki Murakami and launched Shincho Crest Books, an imprint specializing in translations of foreign works. His debut novel, _The Summer House_, received the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, an award that normally goes to seasoned authors who are well along in their careers.

**Margaret Mitsutani** is a translator of Yoko Tawada and Japan's 1994 Nobel Prize laureate Kenzaburō Ōe. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for her translation of Yoko Tawada's _Scattered All Over the Earth_ and winner of the National Book Award for her translation of Yoko Tawada's _The Emissary_.

**Number of Pages:** 400

**Dimensions:** 1.1 x 7.9 x 5.2 IN

**Publication Date:** June 17, 2025

## Details

- **Price:** 18.99 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 18.99 USD | In stock |

## Images

- The Summer House - Paperback

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