What a sweet, thoughtful novel this is, originally written in Japanese and translated by Meredith McKinney. The book was first published in Japan in 2013 and has won two prizes for literature.

The central character is Salimah, a Nigerian woman who, with her husband and two sons, left Africa as a refugee seeking a new life in Australia. The family went to live in a seaside town and, after Salimah’s husband unexpectedly left, she found a job cutting up meat and fish in the local supermarket.

Salimah is worried by her lack of English but she is determined to better herself and starts attending English lessons at a local college. There she meets Sayuri, the young wife of a postgraduate researcher at the local university and mother of a baby girl. Sayuri was well-educated in Japan and can read and write English relatively well, but finds difficulty speaking it. Salimah also meets an older Italian-born woman who can speak English colloquially but is unable to read it properly.

This is a story of women becoming friends, gaining independence, supporting each other through tragedy and depression, and of the love they have for their children that verges on despair.

The Nigerian and Japanese women are united by their affection for the sun, shining on them when they were children in parts of the world far distant from each other.

One wonders how autobiographical the story is, as it was written by a woman who was born in Japan, then came to Australia to study English and has made this country her home for the past 20 years.

When Sayuri decided to start writing again, as a previous teacher had urged, she discovered she could best express herself in her native Japanese. Is that what happened when Iwaki Kei started writing this book?

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville