POSTPONED The Shut Ins with Katherine Brabon

About the Book

Mai and Hikaru went to school together in the city of Nagoya, until Hikaru disappeared when they were eighteen. It is not until ten years later, when Mai runs into Hikaru's mother, Hiromi Sato, that she learns Hikaru has become a hikikomori, a recluse unable to leave his bedroom for years. In secret, Hiromi Sato hires Mai as a 'rental sister', to write letters to Hikaru and encourage him to leave his room. Mai has recently married J, a devoted salaryman with conservative ideas about the kind of wife Mai will be. The renewed contact with her old school friend Hikaru stirs Mai's feelings of invisibility within her marriage. She is frustrated with her life and knows she will never fulfill J's obsession with the perfect wife and mother. What else is there for Mai to do but to disappear herself?

About the Author

Katherine Brabon debut novel The Memory Artist won the The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award (Allen & Unwin, 2016), was shortlisted in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and longlisted in the Indie Book Awards. She was co-winner of the 2019 David Harold Tribe Prize from The University of Sydney for her short fiction, and a runner-up in the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize in 2020. Katherine was an Ambassador at the Melbourne Emerging Writer's Festival in 2019 and enjoys an active role in Australia's literary community. Katherine's writing has appeared in The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, The Lifted Brow, Island magazine, Southerly and she is a regular contributor to Lindsay magazine. She has received grants from the Australia Council and Creative Victoria, and residencies at Chateau Lavigny, Art Omi and the UNESCO Cities of Literature International Residency in Ljubljana.