"A spectacle that includes multiple layers of opposing forces: life and death, love and hate . . . The author uniquely depicts an unruly mythological world." —Shincho Magazine In a place like no other, on a mystical island in the shape of tear drop, two sisters are born into a family of oracles. Beautiful Kamikuu is admired far and wide; Namima, small but headstrong, learns to live in her older sister’s shadow. On her sixth birthday, Kamikuu is chosen as the next Oracle, while Namima is forced to become the goddess of darkness, destined to spend eternity guiding the spirits of the deceased to the underworld. As the sisters serve opposite fates, so begins a journey that will take Namima from her first experience of love to scalding betrayal. Caught in an elaborate web of deceit, she travels from the land of the living to the Realm of the Dead and back again seeking vengeance and ultimate closure. Natsuo Kirino turns her hand to an exquisitely dark tale, masterfully reinventing the Japanese creation myth of Izanami and Izanaki. A fantastical tour-de-force, The Goddess Chronicle is a tale as old as the earth about sibling rivalry, ferocious love, and bittersweet revenge.

Natsuo Kirino (pen name of Mariko Hashioka) is a prize-winning Japanese novelist and prolific writer, most famous for her 1998 novel, Out, which received the Grand Prix for Crime Fiction (Japan’s top mystery award) and was a finalist (in translation) for the 2004 Edgar Award. Four of her novels have been translated into English: Out, Grotesque, Real World and What Remains. Her early work includes romances and stories for manga. Rebecca L. Copeland, professor of Japanese literature at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, received her Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from Columbia University in 1986. Her published works include The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan (2006), co-edited with Dr. Melek Ortabasi; Woman Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women’s Writing (2006); The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father (2001), co-edited with Dr. Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen; Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan (2000); and The Sound of the Wind: The Life and Works of Uno Chiyo (1992). She has also translated the works of Kirino Natsuo, Uno Chiyo, and Hirabayashi Taiko, among others.