Catfish Rolling

An exhilarating debut novel by Clara Kumagai, a dazzling new voice for 12+. Magic-realism and Japanese myth and legend blend in an original story about grief, memory, time - and an earthquake that shook a nation.

There's a catfish under the islands of Japan and when it rolls the land rises and falls.

That's what sixteen-year-old Sora was told after she lost her mother to an earthquake so powerful it cracked time itself. Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones - the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. Sora alone can feel the cracks in time, and her father recruits her help in investigating these liminal spaces.

But it's dangerous there - and as Sora strays further inside in search of her mother, she finds that time distorts, memories fracture and shadows linger... a glimmer of things not entirely human. After Sora's father goes missing, Sora has no choice but to search deeper within the time zones to find him, her mother and perhaps even the catfish itself...

A bold and thought-provoking debut like no other, exploring themes of identity, philosophy, science, ecology, life, loss and love.

Clara Kumagai is from Canada, Japan and Ireland. Her fiction and non-fiction for children and adults has been published in The Stinging Fly, the Irish Times, Banshee, Room, the Kyoto Journal and Cicada, among others. She is a recipient of a We Need Diverse Books Mentorship, and was a finalist for the 2020 Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. Catfish Rolling is her debut novel. @clarakiyoko clarakumagai.com