Lovelier, Lonelier

"Casts a beguiling spell." -Rachel Heng, author of The Great Reclamation

Longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award

In this time-hopping and genre-defying novel, the passing of the Great Comet of 1996 sets in motion a series of inexplicable events in Kyoto, changing the lives of four friends forever.

Four friends meet in Kyoto in 1996 under the passage of Comet Hyakutake through the sky: a journalist arrives with her gallerist friend to fulfill her dying mother's last wish, while a runaway discovers a crying woman in front of a train station. For Jing, Mateo, Isaac and Tori, their weekend of friendship is accompanied by other spectacular signs: fireworks over the Kamo River, phantoms at an underground rave, a talking macaque, and multiple disappearances. Over the course of decades and the span of countries including Singapore, Spain and Malaysia, the consequences of their meeting unfold into meandering and intersecting paths as they fall in love, grow old, grieve, and dream.

At the heart of Daryl Qilin Yam's ambitious, time-hopping, genre-defying novel is an assured and sensitive study of loss and the endurance of love and companionship. When the beauty of art is not enough to make up for suffering, what do we have left?