# The Woman in the Purple Skirt

- Author: Natsuko Imamura
- Translator: Lucy North
- Original title (Japanese): むらさきのスカートの女
- First published: 2019
- Publisher: Penguin Books
- This edition: 2022
- ISBN: 9780143136033
- Shelf: Japanese Literature in Translation

## Card

A woman watches another woman in her neighborhood, the one in the purple skirt, and quietly arranges to bring her closer.  
The narrator's flat, careful voice grows stranger the more she explains herself, and small details keep shifting their meaning.  
For a night on a bench in the park.  

## About this book

Almost every afternoon, the woman in the purple skirt sits on the same park bench and eats a cream bun, and the narrator keeps track of everything she does. Wanting to become her friend, the narrator steers her toward a job at the hotel where she herself works as a housekeeper. From there, the purple-skirted woman's life begins to change, and the narrator watches every step. What lingers is the unease of watching and of being watched.

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