House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

Novellas are a perfect place to start for poets who are interested in writing longer, more narrative work. They’re slim, lyrical, and less daunting. I read this novella in college & haven’t stopped thinking about it since. It takes place in what I can only refer to as a “Sleeping Brothel” where elderly men pay to sleep beside young women. The story is haunting, but it doesn’t take cheap horror shots. Instead, it delves into the complexity of loneliness, the shared vulnerability of sleep, and the human need for comfort.

Yasunari Kawabata is one of the masters of Japanese minimalism, and his House of Sleeping Beauties is by far the strangest book on this list. It concerns a special kind of prostitution: a house where men pay to sleep beside girls – not with them – while the girls themselves are drugged to ensure they do not wake. Curiously, such houses do now operate in Tokyo (they are called ‘cuddle cafes’, though the young women, naturally, are not drugged). Old Eguchi frequents the house of Kawabata’s imagining, hoping to die while embracing a beautiful, sleeping young woman. The ending is… show more.