Don't Laugh at Other People's Sex Lives by Nao-Cola Yamazaki · Polly Barton

“Tender and prickly and consistently confounds expectation . . . the novel is deft and light as air. But it carries a streak of something stronger and sharper than melancholy, tracing a relationship that is at once moving and deeply fraught.” —from the foreword by Katie Kitamura, author of Audition

A love story that feels both new and achingly true from one of Japan’s most acclaimed writers, capturing the intensity, uncertainties, and intimacy of falling for someone for the first time.

Art student Isogai first models for one of his tutors, the much older Yuri, then begins a passionate affair with her. As he gets to know her better, he struggles to understand his own emotions and place in the world, just as he yearns to be closer to her and for her to share more of herself with him.

A touching portrait of late adolescence, Isogai captured with exasperation, humor, and tenderness, Don't Laugh at Other People's Sex Lives is above all else an exploration of the exhilarating and destabilizing experience of a first love that defies prediction or explanation.