Hiromi Kawakami's Under the Eye of the Big Bird begins as an austere fable in the vein of Woman in the Dunes or Never Let Me Go before it unfurls into a uniquely strange creature. Centuries pass. New modes of consciousness emerge.

“My brothers, my father, my mother—they all wanted to be understood. But as soon as I truly understood them, they started to hate me for it. To them, being known was the same as being controlled.”

Better than any thinkpiece about the future, Kawakami conjures the horror and wonder of our species giving way to another as a genuinely felt experience that left me shaken. She might be writing from the year 9000 and telling us the news.