Mei loses her Japanese mother at age six. Growing up in suburban Surrey, she yearns to fit in, suppressing not only her heritage but her growing desire for her best friend Fran.

Yuki leaves the Japanese countryside to pursue her dream of becoming a concert violinist in London. Far from home and in an unfamiliar city, she finds herself caught up in the charms of her older teacher.

Haruka attempts to navigate Tokyo's nightlife and all of its many vices, working as a hostess in the city's sex district. She grieves a mother who hid so many secrets from her, until finally one of those secrets comes to light . . .

Shifting between three intertwining narratives, Mongrel reveals a tangled web of desire, isolation, belonging and ultimately, hope.

An exquisite debut novel weaving together the voices of three young women in Japan and the UK as the threads of their lives twist and entangle in unexpected ways.

Hanako Footman is a British-Japanese author and actor. She grew up in Wimbledon and trained at LAMDA. She now lives in Dalston, East London. As a child she spent her school holidays in Japan, at her grandmother's house by the sea.

She tries to go back whenever she can. Hanako's debut novel Mongrel was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize in 2024.

Daisy Johnson was born in 1990. Her debut short-story collection, Fen, was published in 2016. In 2018 she became the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize with her debut novel Everything Under. She is the winner of the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize, A. M. Heath Prize and Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her debut play, Viola’s Room, was produced in 2024 by the immersive theatre company Punchdrunk. She currently lives in Oxford by the river.

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