Why read The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World?

Book cover of The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World

Book description

Laura Imai Messina’s international bestselling novel is a story about grief, mourning, and the joy of survival, inspired by a real phone booth in Japan with its disconnected “wind” phone, a place of pilgrimage and solace since the 2011 tsunami.

When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in…

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Literary fiction

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Why read it?

2 authors picked The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Judith Teitelman

Author

I love to travel, most especially to Asia and Southeast Asia, and am drawn to novels from, about, and based in those parts of the globe.

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World was particularly intriguing to me as it is a fictional story focusing on a real place that I had read about after Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The author's imagination was sparked by a disconnected old black telephone in a phone booth—a "Wind Phone"—installed on a high hill, offering people the chance to communicate with lost loved ones; their voices carried into the wind.

Beautifully…

From Judith's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Robert Zimdahl

Author

Everyone is going to die. Everyone knows that, and very few deal with it.

Even though we know it’s going to happen, thinking about it and preparing is always postponed. This book introduces us to a uniquely meaningful way to deal with death. It is also a love story.

It was first written in Italian, translated to English, and is set in Japan. All these make for a different and very useful view of how to deal with death.

From Robert's 3 favorite reads in 2023.