Crabs scurrying over a landfill. Huge tadpoles writhing in a pond. A gecko stuck to the window. A sudden invasion of ants. Nature mysteriously creeps in and overruns the realm of humans in this stunning collection of stories.

Hiroko Oyamada masterfully conveys the sense that seemingly stable and ordinary people are cracking at the edges, that a surreal encounter with an animal can change the entire course of one’s life, that an obscure local ritual can have profound consequences. In these fifteen stories we find young couples navigating pregnancies, toddlers, and in-laws; men and women returning to their childhood homes to rediscover the enigmatic traditions they’d left behind; and children who plumb dreamlike riddles in the natural world.

Winner of Japan’s top literary prizes (the Akutagawa, the Tanizaki, the Noma, and the Yomiuri), Taeko Kono writes with a strange beauty: her tales are pinpricked with disquieting scenes, her characters all teetering on self-dissolution, especially in the context of their intimate relationships. In the title story, the protagonist loathes young girls but compulsively buys expensive clothes for little boys so that she can watch them dress and undress. Taeko Kono’s detached gaze at this alarming behavior transfixes the reader: What are we hunting for? And why? Multiplying perspectives and refracting light from the facing mirrors of fantasy and reality, pain and pleasure, Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories presents a major Japanese writer at her very best.