I Want to Kick You in the Back

Risa Wataya · 2003 CE · Short Story · Japanese · Contemporary

Hatsu, a high-school girl who refuses to join the cliques around her, fastens her attention on Ninagawa, a boy absorbed in a fashion model. Her fixation is part tenderness and part aggression, and the title names an impulse she does not understand. Wataya was nineteen when it won the Akutagawa Prize, the youngest winner to that date, and it sold over a million copies.

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