Shy, lonely and introverted Fuyuko lives alone and fills her days with her job as a freelance proofreader. About to turn thirty-five, she cannot imagine ever having any emotional or successful relationship in her life as it currently stands. She is regularly haunted by encounters of the past.But Fuyuko loves the light and goes out on the night of her birthday, Christmas Eve, to count the lights.Her only friend, Hijiri, offers some light in her life, but it is a chance encounter with another man, Mr. Mitsutsuka, a physics teacher, who offers her access from another dimension to light.Pulsing, poetic, modern and shocking, The Night Belongs to Lovers is the third novel from internationally bestselling author Mieko Kawakami.