A jigsaw of somnial narratives, Goodnight Tokyo offers a bewitching nocturnal portrait of a mysterious, eerie and surreal Tokyo. Atsuhiro Yoshida’s book consists of a series of short stories, each one commencing after 1am, that lace together the lives of several characters. All of them are searching for something elusive within peculiar and otherworldly spaces, such as Ibaragi’s second-hand shop in Shimokitazawa, which opens only at night and sells discarded goods that have been repurposed as tools so they can be used to fulfil functions for which they were not originally intended. At one point, the reader is given a detailed description of an all-night diner, including the minutiae of the menu, having been whirled around the city at breakneck speed.

The novel follows a number of characters yet starts and ends with Mitsuki, a procurer of props for film sets, and Matsui, a taxi driver for a small company named Blackbird, who is available ‘Anytime, anywhere.’ Several themes, predominantly memory and longing, underpin the book. Often, characters remark that they