
The end of our species may be sooner than we think, with one calculation giving humans a one in six chance of not surviving the next century. While philosophers, scientists, mathematicians and policymakers work to safeguard humanity by weighing up its existential risks, there are huge questions to ask: what is humanity, and is it worth saving?
Like many good post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels, in Hiromi Kawakami’s Under The Eye Of The Big Bird – translated from Japanese into English for the first time here – civilisational collapse is assumed, and extinction is hinted at. It’s the attempt at surviving and rebuilding, in whatever forms possible, that allows for Kawakami’s innovative worldbuilding and reflections on ethics, political structures and human nature.
The author’s imagination is more original than first appears. Her initial characters are simple, and the world they live in seems devoid of purpose. Beholden to the inner thoughts of an ongoing series of main characters, cycling through aeons, societies and changing genetic makeup, it takes a while to reach any individual whose drive to explore the rest of the world is irresistible.
Are humans humans if they’re not driven by a reckless impulse to discover, create and destroy? Is a novel a novel if it lingers on long periods of contentment and generations of stability, or must a book, a character and a reader be infused with a will to keep moving forward? And if a new humanoid society forms in a forest glade and nobody reads about its fall, did it exist? Under The Eye Of The Big Bird is sure to divide opinion, but those who are happy to linger in existential reflection will find it thought-provoking and deeply moving.
Under The Eye Of The Big Bird, Hiromi Kawakami [trans. Asa Yoneda] (Granta)
Price: £14.99. Info: here
words ISABEL THOMAS