Under the Eye of the Big Bird
In a far future where humanity is going extinct, the species has been scattered into tiny settlements that are tended by mothers, watchers, and a class of AI guardians who run quiet experiments to keep the population alive. Across fourteen linked stories, Kawakami follows children raised in factories, men born from cloned cells, women who can read minds, settlements that worship rabbits, and entire villages that have forgotten language. The "big bird" of the title is the planetary AI that watches everything, and the question of whether humanity should survive at all moves slowly through every chapter. Kawakami writes the entire book at the same calm pitch as Strange Weather in Tokyo, and the dystopia accumulates by inches.
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In a far future where humanity is going extinct, scattered settlements tended by AI guardians try to keep the species alive in this 2024 Booker-shortlisted Japanese novel.
It is structurally challenging. The novel is composed of fourteen linked stories spanning thousands of years of post-human evolution, and characters do not carry forward in conventional ways.
Hiromi Kawakami's novel won the Tanizaki Prize in Japan in 2016. The English translation by Asa Yoneda was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird was written by Hiromi Kawakami, published in 2025 by Granta Books.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird is 288 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Under the Eye of the Big Bird takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird is a standalone novel by Hiromi Kawakami, not part of a series.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.