In Vanishing World, Sayaka Murata once again delivers a daring, uncanny vision of society pushed to its most surreal extremes. Set in an alternate Japan where sex between married couples is taboo and procreation is purely clinical, Murata’s latest explores the collision between biology, desire, and the pursuit of social “purity.”

We follow Amane, a woman grappling with the shame of having been born through natural conception—an act now considered primitive, even perverse. Her journey through a sterile marriage and into the communal, cult-like Experiment City (aka Paradise-Eden) is unsettling and strangely hypnotic, marked by Murata’s signature deadpan tone and surgical dissection of societal norms.

As always, Murata’s strength lies in her ability to make the bizarre feel chillingly plausible. The book probes deeply uncomfortable questions: What is “natural”? What are the costs of erasing individuality and physical intimacy in the name of progress? And can you ever truly cleanse yourself of being human?

Equal parts dystopia, satire, and philosophical provocation, Vanishing World is as disturbing as it is enthralling—a brave, brilliant addition to Murata’s ongoing exploration of alienation in modern life. Dazzlingly strange and deeply thought-provoking, Vanishing World is another bold triumph from one of contemporary fiction’s most fearless voices.

Taboo…bizarre…thought-provoking…and I expected nothing less! Vanishing World is a perfectly strange read that demands your attention from the start and provides immense discomfort throughout. I highly recommend this speculative tale, there are parts that go off the rails a bit but we do expect that with Murata’s work.

4/5 Stars
This book felt uncomfortable in the best way. As always, Sayaka Murata managed to disturbe and fascinate me at the same time. There were so many conversations in this book that got me thinking and quite frankly changed my perspective on some things. It was one of those books that I finished and then had to just stare at a wall and mull over my thoughts for a while. It did feel a bit lengthy in the middle, but apart from that it was really, really good.

I was looking forward to reading Vanishing World after finding Convenience Store Woman by the same author very relatable but unfortunately this was not the book for me.
Vanishing World explored the idea of an alternative universe where physical sexual relations were considered taboo and unconventional. This was a world where IVF was the norm and the idea of "love" did not exist as couples were often married for convenience of the relationship and friendship rather than personal connections.
I found the concept to be very unique which urged me to continue reading. but it had its holes. Ie: if sexual intercourse had been "weeded" out over time as being shameful or undesirable, what happened to the physical/ sensual pleasure of the act itself - surely this itch would make intercourse a desirable act alone... I was able to overlook these obvious holes for sake of finishing the novel but I accumulated a mental list of holes/ questions/ "buts" as I read on.
What really threw me off and what basically forced me to give this novel a lowly 1-star was the entirely unnecessary ending. It was genuinely disgusting and I'm not sure why this was approved to be published as it could be classified as borderline child abuse/ pedophilia. I was thoroughly repulsed.

You know when a new Sayaka Murata book comes out, it is going to be unique and probably quite weird, which Vanishing World delivers on. In a world in the future children are born almost exclusively through artificial insemination. When men were sent off to war to fight, research ramped up into the technique and now it is the expectation. "We are more advanced creatures now." Sex between husband and wife is seen as incest. The protagonist is a woman who is a byproduct of actual sex and is seen as an anomaly. She and her husband move to an experimental city where children are raised by the collective population. All women are called mother and the city is experimenting with artificial wombs on men so everyone can carry a child. A select number of people are chosen to be inseminated every December 24th. While the premise of the book is an interesting one, it gets even weirder as the book continues and the narrator and her husband fall under the influence of the city they move to. Her mother still feels that her daughter was conceived in a natural way that should not be shamed. She says to her "the world you first see when you're born will never vanish from your soul, however much you're infected by the present world." Another interesting plot devised by Murata and I continue to look forward to reading their works.

Thank you to Grove Press via NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata had a fascinating premise and explored some really compelling themes, especially around identity, societal expectations, and what it means to exist outside the norm. While I appreciated the originality and thought-provoking concepts, the story didn’t quite land emotionally for me. I found myself intrigued, but never fully connected. That said, I know this will resonate more deeply with other readers—especially fans of Murata’s unique and often unsettling style. Thank you to the publisher for the early copy!

Book Review: Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata
"Both my husband and I had ingested too much of this world, and we had become normal people here. Normality is the creepiest madness there is. This was all insane, yet it was so right."

Sayaka Murata’s Vanishing World is a chilling and deeply unsettling exploration of how societal ideologies, once entrenched, can erase even the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human. Set in a dystopian future where traditional concepts of love, family, and reproduction have been not just redefined but demonized, Murata forces readers to confront the terrifying ease with which the abnormal can become the new normal.

In this future world, intimacy between married couples is criminalized and viewed as incestuous. Biological reproduction is considered primitive and animalistic, a shameful relic of humanity's uncivilized past. Children are no longer born through natural means, but only through artificial insemination—and they are not raised by parents, but by the public. “Everyone is their mother,” we are told, as the very ideas of maternal care and familial love are stripped of meaning and emotion. The state, in an eerie echo of Orwellian control, has rewritten history books to portray past human intimacy as grotesque and barbaric: “when humans were still animals and had...” becomes a recurring phrase, meant to dehumanize and erase the biological reality of human relationships.

At the center of this disturbing world is Amane, a young woman navigating a society that has erased the idea of private love and personal parenthood. The only person who holds onto the "old" ways is Amane's mother, a character who is ridiculed, marginalized, and considered mentally unstable simply for believing in what once was a universal truth: that family, intimacy, and love are core to human experience. Her resistance is not just emotional—it’s revolutionary. But the power of ideology is relentless.

Murata masterfully depicts how indoctrination seeps in—not through force, but through normalization. The novel’s most horrifying power lies in its subtlety. What begins as shocking slowly morphs into something eerily palatable. Amane, who once recoiled at this new world, begins to absorb it, reshape herself, and surrender her inner truths. As she confesses:
“This was such a strange sight, I thought, but part of me also somehow felt that this was how things had always been... And I was transforming into a person who took the shape of this world.”

By the end, the world that once disturbed Amane becomes her new reality. She loses herself and her humanity. She becomes a monster devoid of emotions and feelings. Her transformation is complete. The "vanishing world, hence," indicates the ideological erasure of not just biological families and intimate love, it is also the vanishing of memory, resistance, humanity, and self.

Vanishing World is not just dystopian fiction. It's a psychological horror, a warning, and a profound meditation on what happens when society decides that our reality is no longer valid, and instead replaces it with a carefully constructed illusion designed to erase instinct, emotion, and individuality.

Definitely a WTF did I just read moment—but not in a good way.

This was such an unpleasant, sterile yet overly sexual reading experience I couldn’t enjoy it for a second. We follow Amane through three periods of her life—sexual awakening, marriage/coming of age, and motherhood—but in an alternate future where copulation has almost been totally replaced with artificial insemination, the dissolution of the family structure and a stark purity culture (but not religious).

The problems for me begin with a narrative that relies on boring repetitive dialogue, barely existent plot and over reliance on bizarre sexual descriptions/experiences; and continues on to achieve seemingly very little but making me feel like I need a shower.

I really like the premise here—but the execution was not for me, the writing (or translation?) was so bare bones, so off-putting, it rode the line between surreal body horror without quit tipping into a place that unnerved me in a way I like, instead it created an atmosphere that was super boring and kinda queasy but not quite eerie or weird enough to be enjoyable (for me) the focus was on reiterating the same info over and over and beating the same scenario to death—ie Amane’s desire to bone all her boyfriends like a total freak, ew no one does that anymore.

I thought ideas surrounding relying on fictional characters to fulfil your romantic and sexual appetites were interesting and worth interrogating, the ideas of humanity evolving to a place without family and what that would look like compelling, but I just don’t think this book did enough. It felt very surface level, and just losing track of the point it was trying to make? Somehow? I dunno. And then the ending? Truly wtf 😳 I can’t say this makes me want to ever pick up another book of hers. 😒

My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for the review copy.

I would've liked this book whether I liked it or not! Sayaka Murata is an alien and I'm so happy she landed here to write her funky little books. The writing is both wise and childish (in a good way) and can really hit the heart of some people. Her characters are always so grown up and immature, and that remained true here. I just had a lot of fun!

Weird, yes. But not weird enough? Weird in the wrong way? I don’t know. I enjoyed it, didn’t love it. A lot of the same conversations being had over and over.

& the ending had me… ??????? why.

After loving Earthlings and Convenience Store Woman, I was soooo excited to read this one, but it ended up being such a letdown. I think the concept for this book is wildly fascinating, but the execution of it was not my favorite. This story has no chapters, which made it feel very tedious and slow paced at times. The conversations in this book get so repetitive and it feels like you're reading the same thing over and over again. I thought the last 3rd of this book was the most interesting section, but I couldn't stand the ending of this book, like WHY is that the direction it had to go in? It was very upsetting to read the ending; I just wasn't feeling it. This book is disturbing like Earthlings, but it didn't hold my attention in the same way at all.

This was so weird and wonderful! Definitely very on theme with her other books. It was such a unique concept too.

This story follows a woman trying to rationalise her desire for sex and family in a world where both are becoming rapidly obsolete. When insemination replaces copulation, marriage becomes an arrangement of strictly platonic companionship, where parasocial desires for fictional characters are the norm in place of traditional sexual/romantic relationships and where children are raised by entire communities rather than belonging to one couple — Amane is trying to figure out just what this means for her as someone who desires a sexual relationship and a traditional family unit complete with a child to call her own and can’t quite figure out why.

I was hooked from the beginning, I absolutely loved her other works ‘life ceremony’ and ‘earthlings’ and was expecting the usual mix of distant madness, engaging writing and social commentary — and I did get that but I’m not sure how much I liked or agreed with it.

It’s a very heavy handed satirisation of (presumably) murata’s own views on issues such as declining birth rates and the ‘breakdown’ of the nuclear family but the way which she dealt with it left me questioning exactly what she wanted the reader to take away from it. In isolation, I think it would be fascinating, but it does feel very ‘we need to preserve the family unit before we become detached and almost inhuman’ to me (I could be completely wrong though MY BAD..)

For example, the main character is repeatedly questioned about her persistent desires to partake in these outdated and even frowned upon traditions, (questions that even had me thinking about where those desires come from or how they might be justified or unjustified) — except the questions lead nowhere, the conversations repeat in different ways and always go the same, very stagnant and boring where much more could’ve been said. It never goes much further than showing us the surface of her unease.

Overall I enjoyed the concept, it was extremely thought provoking to the point where I am excited to mull it over for a WHILE after this (so the review might change too lol) — exactly what the author’s intentions were had me scratching my head a bit but I can’t presume to know that so I’ll judge it based on how it stands by itself.

It’s well written, the world building is fascinating (the body horror was so interesting I’ll be thinking about that too), but the execution feels half baked. I know it’s her style to have relatively short, impactful, weird stories but I do think with a topic so broad there was potential to say MORE! Especially with the ending, which almost felt frantic and lazy as if it was only there for shock value (and echoed her previous books so felt a tad repetitive.)

I would recommend reading this though!! Especially if you enjoyed her other works too :) I’ve not read many things that made me think this much about the concept of family (from marriage to children, from that to society at large, the purpose of sex and romance etc.), even if I may have disagreed with the thesis she posited. I flew through the book and it was a relatively easy read.

Thanks netgalley and the publisher for this arc!!!!

Vanishing World is the exciting new release from Sayaka Murata - author of Earthlings, Convenience Store Woman, and Life Ceremony.

It is a speculative fiction about an alternate version of our world where the vast majority of babies are born via artificial insemination. Married couples no longer have sex, as doing so is considered "incest" since your spouse is part of your "family."

Just like her other books this is a quick, entertaining, and insightful look into what it means to be normal, sexual deviance, platonic relationships, and the classic family structure. I found it to be fast paced and raise some interesting questions regarding the above themes.

The ending shocked me as it was incredibly horrific and disturbing and the rest of the novel didn't really prepare me for it as I didn't see it coming. At first I hated it out of pure disgust, but the more I've sat with it, the more the end makes sense with the discussion I think Murata was trying to have. What happens when what is considered 'normal' is inflexible? Do people rebel in more extreme and dangerous ways than they would if there were less shame in the world?

Overall I didn't connect to this one as emotionally as I did to Earthlings (my personal fave) but it was still a 3.75/4 star read for me!

*Thank you to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Included on BookTrib list of new April releases: https://booktrib.com/2025/04/18/the-chill-quill-april-is-blooming-with-frightfully-fresh-reads/

I am a huge fan of Sayaka Murata but this sadly didn't work for me. As always, I loved her quirky writing and the unique reading experience she always creates. But this felt too repetitive and didn't seem to pick up until the last part. She's still one of my favourite authors but this is her weakest imo.

I've read one other book by this author and quite liked it, so I was excited to give this one a try given the premise (it being considered incest for married couples to have sex to conceive rather than using artificial insemination). I loved this idea, and was quite interested to see where the author would take it. While there were some interesting concepts and I liked several of the aspects relating to how culture, home life, and social norms shifted, these weren't enough to make me enjoy the read.

My biggest issue was with the characters. They felt flat to me, especially the secondary characters. I had the hardest time trying to connect with the protagonist even with how much time we spent immersed in her thoughts. Part of this was how awkward and stilted the dialogue felt to me. It wasn't written in a way that helped the characters feel like real people. There was also a lot of unnecessary repetition, both in the dialogue and the exposition, which made this read feel much longer than it actually is.

I did enjoy the ending, but it was a struggle to get there. Take my review with an unhealthy dose of salt as I tend to struggle with Japanese fiction. If you're looking for a literary fiction with a fascinating concept and tend to enjoy modern Japanese fiction, you may love this one. My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is a hard review for me to write. While Sayaka Murata remains one of my favorite authors (currently on the strength of the magnum opus that is Earthlings alone), I'm afraid that VANISHING WORLD was not it. I made it a little over halfway before I accepted defeat and admitted that it was a miss for e, as it probably will be for others.

This is not because of the premise and the ideas. VANISHING WORLD tells the story of a modern-day Japan that diverged from history during World War II, when, faced with a birthrate issue due to the number of men fighting in the war, researchers developed and normalized a convenient process of artificial insemination, thus redefining what family, love, and sex means. Now that sex and procreation have been successfully separated, increasing numbers of citizens have stopped having sex or even getting married. New social norms have arisen in which dating, sex, and affection can be found outside the "family" if so desired, and it is now common for people to fall in love and have "relationships" with fictional characters.

Once again, Sayaka Murata examines the absurdities of societal notions of sex and relationships, but in the opposite direction from most of her earlier works. Whereas Earthlings and Convenience Store Woman feature main characters who lack a sex drive and eschew societal pressure to have sex and be in traditional family relationships, Amane is unusual in her world in that she DOES have a sex drive, even though her friends and family think she is weird for it. Like all Murata protagonists, she doesn't fit social norms, but her "flipped" views mean a refreshing new angle from which Murata can comment on the arbitrariness of society enacting norms about relationships, families, sex, attraction, and gender onto people... as well as on what HASN'T changed between Amane's world and ours.

Interestingly for me, though Amane's alternate Japan has "fixed" the need for its citizens to have sex for procreation, it hasn't (yet?) addressed other barriers to raising children or forming families. Therefore, Amane and her friends/acquaintances bring up issues such as the continued necessity of having a husband who can work while the mother stays home to take care of the child(ren); of the lack of workplace support for women who want to have children (thus scientists have been working on developing artificial wombs so that men can conceive and carry children, with mixed success). Amane’s Japan is also a place in which same-sex relationships are still not considered acceptable.

The trouble is the story is simply not compellingly told. VANISHING WORLD consists of an endless string of conversations between characters, talking about their society; their views on sex, families, relationships, and raising children; etc. That’s it. There is so much telling rather than showing that I was bored stiff by the book’s slow pace.

Overall, a great idea for a book, but the poor decision to use endless dialogue to world-build and move the “plot” forward meant that I could not enjoy this.

As someone who immensely enjoyed Convenience Store Woman, I was so excited to get the chance to read Vanishing World.

Murata explores so much in such a short novel, breaking apart the family system, love, sex, and identity in just over 200 pages. Our main character Amane was conceived through sexual intercourse during a time when artificial insemination was the more popular method of having a family, and as she begins to grow she reckons with innate feelings and external norms.

Amane and her husband watch the news, at first disgusted with, then slightly more interested by, the implementation of Experiment City and womb transplants. As time goes by, she knows that she is losing her need for love and closeness; what replaces that isn't loneliness, however, but a "cleaner" way of being. The novel was highly readable, and begins to pull you into its bizarre notions of a changed world before you even realise it's happening.

Throughout the novel there is a shifting taking place, with the final form as Mother inching closer. It would be easy to throw away the last few pages as weird, disgusting, and completely unnecessary, but I think Murata is trying to emphasise the complexities of bringing life into the world, and the separation of caregiver and child. The execution of the ending could have been better, but maybe we are meant to sit in our discomfort while Amane realises her final form is Monster, not Mother.


*thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the arc

I absolutely love Sayaka Murata and I wasn’t expecting Vanishing World to turn out the way it did. She is the go-to weird girl read. There is a lot to unravel with Vanishing World and I find the way all the characters are so mesmerizing with their societal beliefs and the lack of sexual activity prior to conceiving children. I also find it really interesting how tunnel-vision people in Experiment City was throughout the last quarter of the book. Overall, I loved this book and I will always read anything Sayaka Murata puts out.