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Sympathy Tower Tokyo

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The award-winning, bestselling Japanese phenomenon. A propulsive, prophetic novel about the beauty of language and the nature of identity in the age of AI.

Welcome to the Japan of tomorrow. Here, the practice of a radical sympathy toward criminals has become the norm and a grand skyscraper in the heart of Tokyo is planned to house wrongdoers in compassionate comfort – Sympathy Tower Tokyo.

Acclaimed architect Sara Machina has been tasked with designing the city's new centrepiece, but is riven by doubt. Haunted by a terrible crime she experienced as a young girl, she wonders if she might inherently disagree with the values of the project, which should be the pinnacle of her career. As Sara grapples with these conflicting emotions, her relationship with her gorgeous – and much younger – boyfriend grows increasingly strained. In search of solace, in need of creative inspiration, Sara turns to the knowing words of an AI chatbot…

Awarded Japan's highest literary prize, Sympathy Tower Tokyo is an extraordinary novel from one of the most exciting new voices in world literature. Partly inspired by conversations with an artificial intelligence, it offers an extraordinary defence of the power of language written by humans, a touching exploration of the imaginative impulse, and an often hilarious send up of our modern world's unrelenting conformity.

'Stuns and illuminates. Sympathy Tower Tokyo is an ode to language and possibility and the ongoing question of how to be in an ever-changing world.' Bryan Washington, author of Memorial

'A brilliantly ambitious struggle and mediation on language, thought and existence. A wondrous book', Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars

© Rie Qudan 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

So über-zeitgeisty that it might have been written this morning, yet it is far more than merely topical or trendy, as deep moral, political, social, cultural, architectural and lingual problems collide throughout this short novel. A contemporary gem
Spectator
Stuns and illuminates. Sympathy Tower Tokyo is an ode to language and possibility and the ongoing question of how to be in an ever-changing world.
Bryan Washington, author of Memorial
A brilliantly ambitious struggle and mediation on language, thought and existence. A wondrous book
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
So cleverly reflects back to us our current world in which artificial intelligence infects our thinking process, determining what we write and how we speak… masterfully subtle
The New York Times
A fantastical fable. Sympathy Tower Tokyo is an architectural feat; at the length of a novella it houses satire, polemic and complex characters
Financial Times
Author Rie Qudan
Narrator Hanako Footman
Duration 4 hours and 5 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781405981743
Format Audiobook
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Genre Artificial intelligence, Dystopian and utopian fiction, Fiction in translation, Impact of science and technology on society, Metaphysical / philosophical fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Social issues
Availability AU, GB, IE

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