This prize-winning debut novel offers a compelling, insightful portrait of modern Japan through a group of architects competing to design a major new building in Tokyo. Tōru Sakanishi is a recent university graduate who joins the prestigious Murai Office, a small architecture firm founded by Shunsuke Murai, former student of Frank Lloyd Wright. A sensitive and observant narrator, Sakanishi is captivated by the artistic quality and careful consideration the Murai Office shows to each of its designs. As the sweltering summer months approach, the Murai Office migrates from Tokyo to Kita-Asama, a mountain village and artists’ colony whose heyday has passed. There, this small team of architects, including two women who Sakanishi is clumsily attracted to, set out to design the National Library of Modern Literature, competing against a rival firm that snaps up one government project after the next. Beautifully translated by National Book Award–winner Margaret Mitsutani, The Summer House is a character-driven story with prose that highlights the natural beauty of Japan, the ingenuity of architecture, and the clashing of modernity and tradition. “Locked in this story of quiet observations and fleeting romances is a tale of creation, destruction, and grandeur.” — Electric Literature , Best Novels of the Year “ The Summer House may be a debut novel, but it’s as substantial as the best works of Haruki Murakami and Yoko Ogawa…in a lean, propulsive English rendered by translator Margaret Mitsutani…Through his quiet, pensive, and clear prose, Matsuie elevates this story to an elegant structure founded on the nature of architecture, the architecture of nature, and affections both platonic and romantic…stunning.” — Asymptote Journal “Elegantly understated…Matsuie, renowned as an editor (of Haruki Murakami, among other writers) before becoming an author, delivers a simple but graceful tale that’s full of intriguing asides on architecture…A novel packed with ideas about art, life, and love.” — Kirkus Reviews “Matsuie’s Yomiuri Prize for Literature–winning debut examines the influence of Western culture on postwar Japan and the clash of modernity and tradition.” — Library Journal (starred review) “The more I read, the more I fell in love with this beautiful novel…Its foremost charm is the fluent, clean-cut use of words. Nothing in Matsuie’s descriptions is superfluous, nor is anything missing, and the refreshing vitality of his prose is impressive...The birth of such a writer is cause for celebration.” —Hiromi Kawakami, author of Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop Masashi Matsuie began his literary career as a fiction editor for the Shinchosha Publishing Company, where he worked with writers such as Yoko Ogawa, Banana Yoshimoto, and Haruki Murakami and launched Shincho Crest Books, an imprint specializing in translations of foreign works. His debut novel, The Summer House , received the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, an award that normally goes to seasoned authors who are well along in their careers. Margaret Mitsutani is a translator of Yoko Tawada and Japan’s 1994 Nobel Prize laureate Kenzaburō Ōe. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for her translation of Yoko Tawada’s Scattered All Over the Earth and winner of the National Book Award for her translation of Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary . 1 Sensei was always the first one up at the Summer House. Just after dawn I was lying in bed, listening to him move around downstairs. I picked up my wristwatch from the bedside table. In the dim light, I saw that it was 5:05. The library, just above the front entrance, had a small bed, where I slept. As day was breaking, muffled sounds would rise through the old wooden posts and walls. I’d hear Sensei remove the bar and stand it against the wall. Then he’d slide the heavy inner door into its casing on the left, and open the outer one all the way until it reached the wall outside, where he’d fasten the brass doorknob with a loop of rope. That kept the wind from blowing it shut. Finally, closing the screen door behind him, he set out on his morning walk. Cold forest air blew softly through the screen door. Soon the Summer House was quiet again. Here in the forest, over a thousand meters above sea level, the first to break the silence were the birds, starting before Sensei stirred. Woodpeckers, grosbeaks, thrushes, flycatchers . . . the names come quickly to mind. Some I can only remember by their song. That morning, even before sunrise, the sky was an odd shade of blue, showing the silhouettes of trees that moments before had been sunk in darkness. All too soon, without waiting for the sun, morning broke. I got out of bed and raised the blind on the small window that looked out onto the garden. Mist, thick clouds of it, veiled the leaves and branches of the katsura tree. The birds were quiet. I stuck my head out of the window to breathe in the mist. If that smell had a color, it wouldn’t