The book’s framing narrative-a midday lunch-quickly gives way to Tsukiko’s story, an airy medley of folktale and allegory. We’re left with an ash-skeleton of sorts, or whatever remains after a lazy afternoon has burned away-the fibrous weave of a rotted-through leaf, say, or the hollow lambency of a cicada shell. At only seventy-nine pages, the book is an alchemical feat of miniaturization, a distillation and bottling-up of the essence of a summer afternoon her slight, subtle prose turns so casually away from excess detail that the resulting image of reality is imbued with a curious weightlessness. You often get the impression, reading Parade, that time has been loosened somehow, as though Kawakami were stringing it up leisurely on a washing line, careful to place her clothespins just so. Time unfolds on a human scale, marked by minor intimacies. Consequently, there’s a slow sensuality at the core of Parade, a product of Kawakami’s relaxed faith in the blessedness of the quotidian. The protagonists of Parade are Tsukiko and Sensei, the star-crossed lovers at the center of Strange Weather, though the new book isn’t really an elaboration of their relationship so much as a breathy aside, a glimpse into the quieter, unlimned moments that constitute their relationship. You don’t really need to be aware that Parade is a loose sequel to Kawakami’s previous novel, 2017’s Strange Weather in Tokyo, to enjoy the former, since it stands on its own as an enrapturing display of writerly grace and restraint. Casting back into her childhood, she settles on a tale, and begins to tell it. When she wakes, the man asks her to tell him a story, preferably one from long ago. After a time, the somnolent shimmer of the insects’ cries and the woman’s postprandial drowsiness flow together, easing her into sleep.

The glass doors of their tatami room have been flung open, and as they sip barley tea and lie together, surrounded by a choral warmth, the sound of cicadas filters into the room.

An older man and a younger woman have just finished a meal on a Saturday afternoon.

Hiromi Kawakami’s latest work begins with a pen-picture of contentment.

Parade hiromi kawakami