The emissary (2018)

Tawada’s isolated future Japan reverses familiar expectations: children are frail while the old remain capable, and language shifts with the damaged world. Margaret Mitsutani translates from Japanese, with the US title The Emissary and UK title The Last Children of Tokyo naming the same short novel. Choose it for playfulness and tenderness inside an apparently bleak premise. The strangeness is linguistic and everyday, with care between a great-grandfather and child carrying more weight than a conventional disaster plot.