Crawling At Night

Nani Power

From Shelf: The 2002 Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist

Newly arrived in New York, Ito is a literate yet tongue-tied sushi chef who recites haiku in his head as he labours over restaurant shopping-lists.

Newly arrived in New York, Ito is a literate yet tongue-tied sushi chef who recites haiku in his head as he labours over restaurant shopping-lists. Alone in his apartment at night, he reads pornographic comics, dreaming of Mariane, a lost, alcoholic waitress who works with him at a Chelsea sushi bar. Across town, Mariane lies in her bath with a drink in her hand, longing for the baby girl she abandoned almost fifteen years before. As Ito and Mariane attempt to make sense of their lives and their memories, they encounter immigrants from across the entire world, each of them bringing their very varied cuisines, histories and expectations to new lives in the New World. Crawling at Night brilliantly reveals the cityscape of today's global city and makes visible the people often condemned to its shadows: in the late night Chinatown clubs; in the downtown restaurants after the CLOSED sign goes up; and behind the closed doors of the studio apartments in Manhattan's high-rises and walk ups.

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