
The Love We Share Without Knowing
Christopher Barzak
In this haunting, richly woven novel of modern life in Japan, the author explores the ties that bind humanity across the deepest divides. Here is a Murakamiesque jewel box of intertwined narratives in which the lives of several strangers are gently linked through love, loss, and fate. On a train filled with quietly sleeping passengers, a young man's life is forever altered when he is miraculously seen by a blind man. In a quiet town an American teacher who has lost her Japanese lover to death begins to lose her own self. On a remote road amid fallow rice fields, four young friends carefully take their own lives—and in that moment they become almost as one. In a small village a disaffected American teenager stranded in a strange land discovers compassion after an encounter with an enigmatic red fox, and in Tokyo a girl named Love learns the deepest lessons about its true meaning from a coma patient lost in dreams of an affair gone wrong. From the neon colors of Tokyo, with its game centers and karaoke bars, to the bamboo groves and hidden shrines of the countryside, these souls and others mingle, revealing a profound tale of connection—uncovering the love we share without knowing. Exquisitely perceptive and deeply affecting, Barzak's artful storytelling deftly illuminates the inner lives of those attempting to find—or lose—themselves in an often incomprehensible world.
Buy this book at Amazon- Publisher
- Bantam
- Year
- 2008
- ISBN-13
- 9780553905892
- Genre
- FictionFantasy
- Topics
- Interconnected livesLove and lossModern Japan and cultural displacement
Awards
- Locus Award for Best Fantasy NovelShortlisted(2009)
- Nebula Award for Best NovelShortlisted(2009)
If you liked The Love We Share Without Knowing, you could also like these

Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
1 win · 8 score

A Tale for the Time Being
Ruth Ozeki
0 wins · 8 score

The Book of Form and Emptiness
Ruth Ozeki
1 win · 12 score

The Lost Souls of Benzaiten
Kelly Murashige
0 wins · 2 score

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
David Mitchell
0 wins · 4 score

The Pine Islands
Marion Poschmann
0 wins · 4 score

Dreams of Speaking
Gail Jones
0 wins · 4 score
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami
0 wins · 4 score

The Night Ocean
Paul La Farge
0 wins · 4 score

All the Lovers in the Night
Mieko Kawakami with Sam Bett and David Boyd (trans.)
0 wins · 4 score

The Melancholy of Untold History
Minsoo Kang
1 win · 5 score

Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone
Richard Lloyd Parry
1 win · 12 score

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Cory Doctorow
0 wins · 2 score

So Many Ways to Begin
Jon McGregor
0 wins · 2 score

Where the Wild Ladies Are
Aoko Matsuda, trans. by Polly Barton
0 wins · 2 score
Similar Topics

A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan
2 wins · 28 score
Interconnected lives
Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann
2 wins · 24 score
Interconnected lives
The Hours
Michael Cunningham
1 win · 20 score
Interconnected lives
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Richard Flanagan
1 win · 16 score
Love and loss
A Shock
Keith Ridgway
1 win · 12 score
Interconnected lives
Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories
Edith Pearlman
1 win · 12 score
Love and loss
Celestial Bodies
Jokha Alharthi
1 win · 12 score
Love and loss
Everything Inside
Edwidge Danticat
1 win · 12 score
Love and loss
Fortune Smiles
Adam Johnson
1 win · 12 score
Love and loss
Improvement
Joan Silber
1 win · 12 score
Interconnected livesThe Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu
Tom Lin
1 win · 12 score
Love and loss
A Whole Life
Robert Seethaler
0 wins · 8 score
Love and loss
Five Decembers
James Kestrel
1 win · 8 score
Love and loss
Great House
Nicole Krauss
0 wins · 8 score
Interconnected lives
Palimpsest
Catherynne M. Valente
0 wins · 7 score
Interconnected lives