The Diving Pool

Three strange, tortuous stories from the shadow queen of contemporary Japanese fiction.

A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool - sparking an unspoken infatuation that draws out darker possibilities.

A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, but rather than a story of growth the diary reveals a more sinister tale of greed and repulsion.

Driven by nostalgia, a woman visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo. There she finds an isolated world shadowed by decay, haunted by absent students and the unsettling figure of the looming caretaker.

The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

© Yoko Ogawa 2008 (P) Penguin Audio 2026