Weeb

'It's invigorating to read a debut this assured, this invested in the big questions - without forgetting the reader's delight... I loved it.' Kaveh Akbar

'Celebrates the way languages work, the way they project culture, identity, and our deepest desires. Weeb is terrific!' Gary Shteyngart

weeb (noun): slang for a non-Japanese person who is excessively devoted to Japanese culture, even to the point of wishing to adopt a Japanese identity

A recent graduate calling herself 'Rina' moves to Tokyo, ostensibly to launch her academic career, but in truth to pursue something far more private: her obsession with Kagami, the enigmatic hero of her favourite anime.

Fluent in Japanese, a meticulous student and alert to every nuance, Rina begins to construct a version of herself that might almost pass as Japanese. She curates her name, her past and her ambitions, drawing ever closer to the industry that surrounds her idol - and to the voice that brings him to life: the middle-aged actor Fujimoto Fumitaka.

As she burrows deeper into Tokyo's entertainment world, Rina becomes entangled with a cast of performers and outsiders - her Taiwanese idol-in-training neighbour, the eerily perfect child influencer she tutors, her favourite fan artist and an astute hairdresser - and her carefully assembled identity begins to fracture.

From the translator of the International Booker Prize-winning Taiwan Travelogue, Weeb is an unsettling, addictive novel about obsession, identity and the dangerous fictions we tell ourselves to belong.