'Ceremony of Life' is a collection of short stories by Sayaka Murata, for which her prose is highly regarded in Japan. At once sweet and shocking, they catch the reader off guard and linger in the memory. Interweaving the humorous and the horrific, Murata twists social norms and traditions to reveal the inner lives of her characters: outcasts and loners. Deciphering whether the events take place in modern Japan, the past, or an alternate reality can sometimes be quite difficult, as the characters often seem unusually normal in a frighteningly unusual world. In her strange and wonderful stories about family and friendship, sex and intimacy, community and individuality, Murata asks, above all, what it means to be human in our world.