The Premonition: A Novel

Banana Yoshimoto

Nov 2023 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Kathleen Li

About this audiobook

Yayoi, a nineteen-year-old woman from a seemingly loving middle-class family, has lately been haunted by the feeling that she has forgotten something important from her childhood. Her premonition grows stronger day by day and, as if led by it, she decides to move in with her mysterious aunt, Yukino. No one understands her aunt's unusual lifestyle. For as long as Yayoi can remember, Yukino has lived alone in an old gloomy single-family home, quietly, almost as though asleep. When she is not working, Yukino spends all day in her pajamas, clipping her nails and trimming her split ends. She eats only when she feels like it, and she often falls asleep lying on her side in the hallway. She sometimes wakes Yayoi at 2:00 a.m. to be her drinking companion, sometimes serves flan in a huge mixing bowl for dinner, and watches Friday the 13th over and over to comfort herself. A child study desk, old stuffed animals-things Yukino wants to forget-are piled up in her backyard like a graveyard of her memories. An instant bestseller in Japan when first published in 1988, The Premonition is finally available in English, translated by the celebrated Asa Yoneda.

About the author

Banana Yoshimoto is the author of the international bestseller Kitchen. She has published ten books in English translation, including Goodbye Tsugumi, Moshi Moshi, and most recently, Dead-End Memories. Her work has been translated and published in more than thirty countries.

Kathleen Li is an Asian American narrator whose parents are from Taiwan. She has a warm, engaging, and empathetic voice that lends itself equally to YA, fantasy, historical fiction, and self-help audiobooks, as well as to other genres.