Before the Coffee Gets Cold

A beautiful, moving story about a small Japanese cafe that offers its visitors the chance to travel back in time. For fans of The Guest Cat and If Cats Disappeared from the World.

**What would you change if you could go back in time?/b>In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe's time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . . Toshikazu Kawaguchi's beautiful, moving story - translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot - explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

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Vorwort
A beautiful, moving story about a small Japanese café that offers its visitors the chance to travel back in time, to find an answer to the question: what would you change if you could go back? For fans of The Guest Cat and If Cats Disappeared from the World.

Autorentext
Toshikazu Kawaguchi was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1971. He formerly produced, directed and wrote for the theatrical group Sonic Snail. As a playwright, his works include COUPLE, Sunset Song, and Family Time. The novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold is adapted from a 1110 Productions play by Kawaguchi, which won the 10th Suginami Drama Festival grand prize.

Klappentext

"Are you listening?" Kazu continued. "When you return to the past, you must drink the entire cup before the coffee goes cold."
"Uh. I don't actually like coffee that much."
Kazu opened her eyes wider and brought her face an inch or so from the tip of Fumiko's nose.
"This is the one rule you have to absolutely obey," she said in a low voice.
"Really?"
"If you don't, something terrible will happen to you . . .""Are you listening?" Kazu continued. "When you return to the past, you must drink the entire cup before the coffee goes cold."
"Uh. I don't actually like coffee that much."
Kazu opened her eyes wider and brought her face an inch or so from the tip of Fumiko's nose.
"This is the one rule you have to absolutely obey," she said in a low voice.
"Really?"
"If you don't, something terrible will happen to you . . ."