I was so intrigued about the plot of this novel and had been really looking forward to reading it.

However I found it just a bit too weird for me personally and this took over what could have been a more interesting story! I can see this being more suited to other readers who prefer this style though!

Sayaka Murata is one of my favourite authors and I absolutely adored this book! Beautifully written and kept me reading way longer than I should have been! Honestly it’s just perfection!

Sadly i couldn‘t get into Murata‘s latest novel even though I was really excited about this one.
It felt really slow in the beginning and nothing in her story really connected with me..

Humans have evolved past sex. They still get married for the partnership and the financial benefits, but in order to have children, they get artificially inseminated - there's even clinical trials with artificial wombs for men or people who otherwise cannot carry a fetus. To have sex with your spouse is considered incest and most people don't even fall in love with other people anymore, but with characters from fictional works. Amane is different though. Concieved herself by sex between her parents, despite all her efforts to not turn out like her mother, she falls in love with real people and has the desire to have sex with them,
This was such an interesting and compelling read! Short, strange and so well written I could barely put it down. Sayaka Muratas clean storytelling and character voice made this book so much more than a sci-fi exploration of childbearing and family. I really liked Amanes point of view and the ending was very very surprising but not less on point than the rest of the book. Looking forward to my next Sayaka Murata!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this advanced reader's copy and the opportunity to this early. Review has been posted on Waterstones and Goodreads.

3.5 / 5 | Arc provided by Netgalley

The beauty in Sayaka Murata’s commentary is that she has such a distinct method of exploration that has no equal (at least from what I’ve been able to find). Having only recently discovered her work this past year via her novel Convenience Store Woman, I was eager to see how her style of an estranged protagonist attempting to blend in with a world they see as strange would serve her other, more challenging and stranger narratives.

Vanishing World further establishes this method of commentary, placing the protagonist in the position of alien in a world where children are created through artificial insemination by having her created through the traditional way – seen in the novel as a great transgression. Moreover, she enjoys love and sex, both with real and nonreal people, something that places her in many discussions with classmates, colleagues and lovers throughout the novel.

The world of this novel wishes to explore the rather fragile standings of society and its views on gender, family/community, and sex, but I found while such discussions were certainly present they failed to conclude much beyond the concept of the collapse of gender for the sake of the demolishing of sexual liberty and desire in order to return to a world before Eve at the apple - in other words, a return to purity and a rejection of deviancy.

In addition to this, the novel ghosts over an interesting discussion around conformity and the gradual deterioration of individual wants and desires, though like its commentary on gender and society’s need for purity it only manages to scratch the surface of the topic. In fact, the only topic I’d say it stumbles into in a deeper way is the existence of non-sexual relationships. Yes, they’re backdropped by a society desperate to limit sexual activity and push people into celibacy, but the relationship between the protagonist and her second husband is a wonderful addition to the novel’s otherwise downward spiral exploration of it’s other themes.

The novel was still entertaining, in spite of it’s rather surface level attempts to prove it’s point, and I would argue it does open up the possibility for further discussions around the topics of purity culture, the concept of a family unit within our current world, and the clinginess and potential collapse of gender roles. However, it’s failure to properly conclude these ideas beyond the initial sewing of the seed means it pales in comparison to Convenience Store Woman.

Vanishing World delivers exactly what I expect and hope for from Sayaka Murata. Rather weird, but also challenging, questioning and thought provoking. It felt rather prescient as the world in which we live examines and debates more what it means to procreate, gender roles and the human relationships involved.

She does it again 😍 the weird, dystopian world about catchment areas and reproduction is so consuming. So interesting. I love this woman

A new Sayaka Murata release is always a reason to celebrate, and even more so when she takes on topics like sex, sexuality and gender expectations which is a topic that always fascinates me. Couple this with Murata’s sharp, weird and uncomfortable criticisms of society and it’s usually a winner, in a very hands-over-the-eyes kind of way.

Amane is ten years old when she discovers she's not like everyone else. Her school friends were all conceived the normal way, by artificial insemination, and raised in the normal way, by parents in 'clean', sexless marriages. But Amane's parents committed the ultimate taboo: they fell in love, had sex and procreated. As Amane grows up and enters adulthood, she does her best to fit in and live her life like the rest of society: cultivating intense relationships with anime characters, and limiting herself to extra-marital sex, as is the norm. Still, she can't help questioning what sex and marriage are for.

But when Amane and her husband hear about Eden, an experimental town where residents are selected at random to be artificially inseminated en masse (including men who are fitted with artificial wombs), the family unit does not exist and children are raised collectively and anonymously, they decide to try living there. But can this bold experiment build the brave new world Amane desires, or will it push her to breaking point?

From the very beginning, ‘Vanishing World’ completely turns societal norms and expectations on their head: sex in a marriage is taboo, sex itself is rapidly dying out, and all children are conceived by artificial insemination. Amane is different to her peers as she still experiences sexual desire and craves intimacy with other people, while also still buying into the social norms around marriage and family, and projects a lot of her desires onto carefully crafted anime characters that are created as an outlet for desire. This society is also completely void of gender and sexual diversity and everything other that cis heterosexual relationships appear to be forbidden and are barely touched upon, with the exception of Amane mentioning that it’s wild that same sex marriage still not being allowed, which also reflects the current position of LGBT+ people in Japan.


It’s an absolutely fascinating perspective and it sets up the opportunity for what feels like a very personal attack on the institution of marriage. Marriage is a transaction in Amane’s world, and even then, as she ages and society ‘progresses’ even that use of marriage begins to taper off and a single life becomes the norm. There was of course a significant critique of life in contemporary Japan in ‘Vanishing World’ but it also very much felt like a personal vendetta against marriage as an institution and that made it even more fascinating and enjoyable to read. After a little research, it turns out that my hunch was correct and that Murata views marriage as “a hostage situation”* and Amane’s society of projecting intimate and romantic desires onto fictional characters is also something that Murata has experienced herself: “I have had relationships with humans, but I’ve also loved a lot of people in stories”*.

It’s a really unusual point of view in Western society, and I believe in the very traditionally patriarchal Japanese society, and it’s such a wonderfully novel perspective that I’m very much hoping is present in Murata’s backlist that will hopefully continue to be translated into English. These feelings are the antithesis of what a woman ‘should’ want, what she should aspire and work towards: love, marriage, and children, and Murata openly and bolding challenges this outlook. I hope she continues challenge societal norms in the most unsettling way possible.

‘Vanishing World’ is an incredibly readable and thought provoking look at love, sex and marriage with the kind of incredibly shocking and uncomfortable ending that I’ve come to expect from Sayaka Murata.

*‘Marriage feels like a hostage situation, and motherhood a curse’: Japanese author Sayaka Murata’, The Guardian, 2025

Thank you to Granta Book and NetGalley for the review copy.

Written by Sophie

Unfortunately I couldn’t get into this. It seemed to be an over the top obsession with an anime character and I honestly just felt uncomfortable reading this. This author is very hit or miss for me.

Overly fascinating, disturbing, yet very interesting take on a future scenario, set in a world where babies are conceived artificially and romantic relationships with intimacy are no longer meant to happen but rather frowned upon. This book pursues with a fluid writing style, complex character development and a story you´ve never read before!

Sayaka Murata did it again. I love how curious and strange her stories are and Vanishing World felt like a combination of her previous novels. The book was strange, terrifying yet once more incredible. And though this book is a translaton, one can tell how incredible Murata's writing style and way with words in general is.

I have loved Murata's work which are quirky and border disturbing but also written about the unspoken realities that make people uncomfortable but exist.
The concept of the book where romantic end-game love is only experienced in the 'Vanishing World' and the normal everyday reality in the 'new world' is one where it is acceptable to have emotional love affairs with sex deemed as abhorrent so children are only conceived via artificial insemination. I love this idea as I feel, if read between the lines' it reflects in a way on society today - with love being more meaningful and romantic back in the day before the rise in social media when everything became easily accessible (filters, porn, dating and texting apps) whereas back in the day courtship took longer - you met someone face to face, spoke on house phones or wrote letters). The story follows Amane, who was born in the old world but living in the new world and is caught between understanding what is considered right and wrong and where she belongs.
This story was so profoundly frightening and yet poetic as it really gives a different perspective on what is really the growing reality we are living in now.

I’ve read all of Sayaka Murata’s translated work and usually love her strange, thought-provoking stories - Earthlings is still a favourite! - but this one didn’t really land for me.

The story follows Amane, who grows up in a society where sex and love are taboo and reproduction is entirely clinical. Her parents broke the rules by actually falling in love and having her the “old-fashioned” way, which marks her as different. As an adult she ends up moving to a bizarre experimental city where people are artificially inseminated en masse and children are raised anonymously by the state.

It had the usual offbeat premise I expect from Murata, but the writing felt really flat and the story didn’t have the depth I was hoping for. It all felt like it was trying too hard to shock without really saying much. A rare miss for me, but I’ll still pick up whatever she writes next.

Another masterpiece by Murata. Unsetteling and deeply human at the same time. One of the finest writers at the moment.

I was super excited to read this having loved Murata’s other stuff but found it to be less nuanced and compelling than Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings. The central ideas are intriguing and challenging as we’d expect from Murata: children are raised communally, traditional family units and even traditional couples no longer exist. Sex is considered old fashioned and just plain weird and the idea of a husband and wife having sex with each other is properly icky. However, I found the writing of these ideas more repetitive than I’d normally expect from Murata which made sense when I read that this book is actually earlier work of hers than CSW and Earthlings.

Definitely worth reading if you’re a fan of Murata’s particular style of weird, but if you’re looking for an entry into reading Murata I’d point you towards CSW instead.

Side note: if you’ve been following International Booker this would make quite a nice companion read to Under the Eye of the Big Bird.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! Although this is the ‘new’ Sayaka Murata in English, it’s actually one of the earliest she wrote and I do think that’s evident. I didn’t find Vanishing World as compelling from the get go as I have with her others, but it did pull me in more as I reached the second half. It’s got her usual themes of picking apart modern society, with marriage and reproduction on the chopping block. In this world, sex with your spouse is seen as incest, and couples take lovers (sometimes fictional) instead, as well as use artificial insemination to have babies. I got a bit tired of the repetition of the MC’s relationships with various anime characters.

But the second half where the MC and her husband move to ‘Experiment City’ kicks the weirdness up a notch. All babies are everyone’s babies, kept in a sort of communal holding pen where people go to spend time with them - utterly bizarre. It’s not a Murata novel if you don’t say ‘what the fuck’ out loud at least once. I certainly was by the ending, but I really don’t know how I felt about the end - apart from icky.

Not as strong as her others, including the collection of short stories she has out in English.

A quietly unsettling and provocative story set in the near future where science has redefined intimacy, relationships, and family. Marriage is a sibling like relationship and sex with your spouse is deemed "incestuous". Extra marital relationships are the norm and encouraged. The world-building is imaginative and disorienting in the best way, challenging norms and expectations.

The tone shifts dramatically in the final third of the book—intense and potentially disturbing for some. Vanishing World that lingers, and I’m still processing how I feel about it.

Reading books in translation can often be simple, but it becomes much more difficult when there are different societal norms and practices in the home country. Sayaka Murata's Vanishing World, as translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is a tricky one to translate because the future Japan it exists in has changed with regard to how core family relationships are organised. We follow our lead character Amane through her life, from her natural birth - which in this society is unusual as most people are artificially inseminated. Indeed it is a little frowned upon to have actual sex at all, and certainly as Amane grows up it becomes increasingly taboo for married couples to have any sort of physical relationship. At the same time people fall in love all the time, though often just with fictional anime characters, often designed to fulfil that role. As she grows up Amane describes her first love - Lapis - a lead in an anime who she has her first sexual relationship with (though much discussion is had about it just being masturbation). She later finds a fellow fan, who she has her first actual physical relationship with, though since everyone is fitted with contraceptive devices it is hard to say how much of the copulation is as we would understand it. As she grows older we see her negotiate this new world and her own place in it, she has more physical relationships but also carries around a purse full of her 40 other lovers, fictional creations. She gets married and they try to get pregnant, all whilst having separate love relationships.

Part of the translation issue, and this is very cultural, is to what degree Amane is unusual. She occasionally mentions feeling out of place, and has female friends who find her excitement in physical sex, weird. There is also the degree to which this scenario leads out of the current Japanese relationship crisis, where working women do not find their male counterparts attractive. There is certainly a homophobic aspect to Japanese society that is embedded here, as marriages are not meant to be the form of procreation, the lack of same sex marriages seems anachronistic (it is discussed as the possible end of any kind of family whatsoever). The final third of the book finds Amane and her husband moving to the experimental city of Chiba, where pregnancy is decided by a computer, which inseminates all those eligible at the same time - men and women alike (one of the experiments is a male womb). Once parents in Chiba give birth they give up their children to the society birthing centre, and the city is full of children who call everyone "mother" and are fundamentally co-parented by the city. This is a big step, has shades of Brave New World about it and is seen to be equitable and the future. Amane likes the solitary aspect of it, but has other issues about her physical urges which suddenly shifts the last twenty pages or so into an actual horror story.

Vanishing World is a fascinating work, even with its somewhat unsettling coda. It feels very Japanese, its talk of romantic relationships with fictional character seems to push Ginny Tapley Takemori into some tricky areas in translation, it feels like this is an idea that is already concurrent in Japanese society. The scenario presented seems very speculative to my eyes, but possibly not so much in modern Japan, where ideas about the point of family and relationships may be at a different stage. I'm not sure the final lurch into horror does it any favours, though it certainly gives it a more sensationalist denouement (there is a "ban this sick filth" aspect to it). Robust and thought-provoking.

This is, I think, more speculative fiction than dystopian. The ‘Vanishing World’ that the author describes is one where romantic love and sex is not favoured. The new world where our main character Amane lives is one where sex doesn’t happen - in fact it is thought of as being gross. And marriage is purely platonic - if a husband and wife do have sex, that is incest. The marriage is for family - for children. But these children are conceived through artificial insemination. However, affairs are encouraged! In fact affairs are considered normal - husband and wives will sometimes invite their respective lovers to dine with them. But these are lovers not in the way that we understand lovers. These love affairs are platonic also - if they are with ‘real’ people, because a lover can also be a fictional character. Mangas, movies and even books are designed with characters that the readers will fall in love with. But returning to Aname, she was born because her parents went against the ‘norm’ and had sex. She also likes the physical and has to encourage her real lovers in the act - they don’t know what to do and when they do they don’t like it! This is perhaps a commentary on the falling birth rate in Japan and the way that Japanese women are rejecting their traditional gender roles. Aname and her husband move back to Chiba which has now been renamed Experiment City which is a utopian place where there is no marriage, where there is a lottery to choose who gets inseminated - there is no barrier as artificial wombs have been created so older women and even men can become pregnant- and this happens on on specific day so all the children are born at the same time. These children are raised communally - all the adults are Mothers and all the children are Kodomo-chans and they all dress alike, they have the same hairstyle, they all look alike. And in this way the author challenges what is normal because for everyone in Experiment City - this is normal. For Aname - does she give up falling in love and having physical sex or does she follow the new normal? It is a novel that challenges family, marriage and even the miracle of birth. A strange read.