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Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022


Mieko Kawakami's Heaven is a plain-seeming, heartrending novel about bullying that deftly tests assumptions about morality and meaning...and invites a close encounter with Nietzschean philosophy.

The narrative follows 14-year-old narrator's resigned yet inly tormented struggle against bullying, as well as his frustrated endeavours to make sense of his trampled-upon existence. He is convinced that his lazy eye makes him an easy target, as do Kojima's self-created 'signs' (her wilfully 'dirty' appearance, linking her to her miserably poor father, and her later refusal to eat, resulting in excessive weight loss). Both the narrator and Kojima are presented as outsiders, othered and unaccepted by the world �� epitomes, in Kojima's view, of 'the strength of weakness'. The narrator in particular feels that he has no choice in the matter; that the world ruthlessly and unfailingly predetermines his inescapable fate.

But is it really so? Is there meaning in pain and suffering? How does the dialectical relationship between strength / weakness and its predominance invalidate the standard conception of good versus bad? What are we left with, when there is seemingly nothing left to save?

These are some of the questions our main characters grapple with. The bullies �� Ninomiya, Momose and clan �� represent the extreme pole of domination, post-moral conduct with the prevailing of the pleasure principle, arbitrariness and meaninglessness. The bullied �� the narrator and Kojima �� represent, on the other hand, the other extreme pole of subjugation, with a belief in moral standards, structures, and the possibility of meaning. This scissors-like contradiction �� and the broad spectrum of its possible manifestations, with murkily merging, at times dangerously overlapping outcomes �� constitute the firm framework of the narrative.

The simplicity of the storyline allows for a more invested approach to philosophical enquiry and nuancing. In this respect, it is of some importance to note that the narrative portrays the bullied's sharp sense of vulnerability and humiliation �� and does so with urgent intimacy �� before articulating a more complex understanding of its thematic concerns. On their Summer trip to the museum, Kojima tells the narrator about a painting featuring a couple in ordinary circumstances, enjoying the rewards reaped from having overcome pain and sadness together. She renames the painting 'Heaven', because clearly this represents her fairly naïve idea of heaven. It is however symptomatic that Kojima and the narrator never actually get to view the painting together. And, also, that the ending is deliberately ambiguous on this front, that is, as regards to the empowering force of overcoming suffering. It is certainly not cathartic in a complete sense, or distortedly so. Because the narrator is only able to draw 'incompatible conclusions' and is 'unable to tell which one was true'.

The extended, exceedingly harrowing, and bloody bullying episode �� in which the narrator gets heavily injured and must go to the hospital �� builds up to the confrontation, between the narrator and Momose, on which the entire thrust of the novel's philosophical questioning seems to rest. I would argue, however, that the confrontation scene presents some important issues. Essentially, it is baffling that Momose should be expected to take upon himself the weighty task of recalibrating the morality question, with claims and statements that can hardly be those of a 14-year-old. The level of unconvincing discourse at such a momentous and critical point of the narration is not what I would have expected. Insofar as it is a pivotal movement in the novel, I cannot help but feel that the somewhat awkward, inadequately handled, and overall unsatisfactory execution of this scene is far from being a trivial matter, and sadly undermines the narrative cohesion. It is as if Kawakami gets carried away by the desire to trace a philosophically complex tabula of the morality question, removing her characters from their determining contexts. In essence, Momose calls forth the idea that 'It couldn't be any simpler. People do what they can get away with.' Acting, therefore, on the spur of the moment; purely doing things on a whim. Irrespective of the person on the receiving end. Because what matters, from where the bullies are standing, is following one's urges, whatever they may be.

I found the writing delicately poetic, lyrical almost, in its depiction of the narrator's interaction with his hostile whereabouts and his plight; also with nature itself as it is perceived by him, through his lazy eye: depthless and, on its part, beautifully overpowering. There is also a touching sense of intimacy in the unfolding of his friendship with Kojima, largely developed through letter-writing and punctuated by moments of silence. The development of their friendship is not strained at all, and does justice to the morose sentiment of Kawakami's vision.

This is ultimately an important novel. It strikes me as a singular occurrence within the literary scene, in that it sets itself the task of presenting a sufficiently complex portrayal of a reality �� bullying �� that does not generally find its way into literary fiction, notwithstanding the range of its marked presence and manifestation in everyday existence.

4 stars. The novel's philosophical import is worth noting. To my mind, however, the partial mismanagement of the narrative's core movement constitutes too relevant an issue, and detracted, to some degree, from its literary value.