Watersong

Clarissa Goenawan

“Watersong transports the reader to worlds both familiar and unknown. Clarissa Goenawan’s crisp narration and vivid characters made this novel feel like a lingering dream. This is an intriguing and soul-stirring story about how we reconcile with our pasts.”

Balli Kaur Jaswal, author of The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

“Haunting, dreamy, and deeply atmospheric, Watersong is a jewel box of a novel, spilling forth with stories within stories, each a perfect, gleaming tribute to lost love, past secrets, and the enduring quest for human connection amidst it all.”

Kirstin Chen, author of Soy Sauce for Beginners

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“An atmospheric mystery, elegantly told.”

Winnie M. Li, author of Dark Chapter

“Watersong reads like Murakami but with actually well written female characters; it is a slowburn literary mystery full of anticipation and interconnected parts. Goenawan expertly weaves a seemingly normal life into the seedy underbelly of Japan, including foreboding fortune tellers and a remarkable story of love and longing.”

Katrina Wallace, Carmichaels Bookstore

“Each time I read work by Clarissa Goenawan I find myself wondering why she isn't better known.”

Sarah-Hope Parmeter, University of California, Santa Cruz

“This is the third novel I’ve read by this author. Each novel has been mesmerizing. Clarissa writes the most unique page turner Watersong kept me reading totally involved literary fiction at its best.”

Rhonda Lomazow

“A compelling novel … Watersong is a captivating and nuanced exploration of love.”

Akina Hansen, Good Reading Magazine

“[T]ruly magnificent. It touches the soul while exploring the cognitive aspects that have lingered behind certain elements of society … Truly a work of art … Watersong will be one that must be considered as a top contender for memorability, and characterization of the highest degree.”

Chris Reed, NZ Booklovers

“Goenawan’s chilling latest delivers one startling revelation after another … Goenawan sustains a fast pace all the way to a shocking and satisfying conclusion. This author continues to impress.”

Publishers Weekly

A mesmerizing novel by the author of Rainbirds and The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida about a young man trying to escape his past in Japan.

When Shouji Arai crosses one of his company’s most powerful clients, he must leave Akakawa immediately or risk his life. But his girlfriend Youko is nowhere to be found.

Haunted by dreams of drowning and the words of a fortune teller who warned him away from three women with water in their names, he travels to Tokyo, where he tries in vain to track Youko down. But Shouji soon realises that not everything Youko told him about herself was true. Who is the real woman he once lived with and loved, and where could she be hiding?

Watersong is a spellbinding novel of loves lost and recovered, of secrets never spoken, and of how our pasts shape our futures.

Balli Kaur Jaswal, author of The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

Kirstin Chen, author of Soy Sauce for Beginners

View all reviews

“An atmospheric mystery, elegantly told.”

Winnie M. Li, author of Dark Chapter

Katrina Wallace, Carmichaels Bookstore

“Each time I read work by Clarissa Goenawan I find myself wondering why she isn't better known.”

Sarah-Hope Parmeter, University of California, Santa Cruz

Rhonda Lomazow

“A compelling novel … Watersong is a captivating and nuanced exploration of love.”

Akina Hansen, Good Reading Magazine

Chris Reed, NZ Booklovers

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 8.3in × 5.3in

Extent:304pp with with flaps

ISBN (13):9781950354979

RRP:$17.00

Pub date:18 Jul 2022

High-res cover:Download Image

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AUTHOR

Clarissa Goenawan

Clarissa Goenawan is an Indonesian-born Singaporean writer and translator. Her award-winning short stories have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Singapore, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, Italy, the UK, and the US. Rainbirds, her debut novel, has been published in eleven different languages. Her second novel, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida, came out in 2020. Watersong is her third novel.