Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a magical-realist novel about a Tokyo cafe that offers customers the opportunity to travel through time.
The book is divided into four parts. The first section focuses on a woman who wants to go back in time to redo her last conversation with her boyfriend before he left for America. The woman learns there are strict rules to the cafe's time travel: You can only visit people who have also been in the cafe, you must stay in your seat, and you must finish your cup of coffee before it goes cold; if you stay too long, you will be transformed into a ghost. The woman also learns that nothing she does in the past will change her present circumstances. Despite the rules, the woman goes back in time and the conversation ends with the boyfriend asking her to wait for him to return. She realizes that while her present is no different, her future may have changed for the better. In the second part, a nurse goes back in time to learn that her husband doesn't want her to treat him as merely a patient when his early-onset Alzheimer's progresses. The third part focuses on a young woman who learns her recently deceased sister wanted her to return home so they could run their parents' inn together. The fourth section is centered on one of the cafe owners: After learning that her weak heart means she will likely die during childbirth, she travels into the future to meet her as-yet-unborn daughter, who thanks her for giving her the gift of life. The novel ends with the cafe owner's revelation that while people cannot change their present, time travel affords their customers the opportunity to develop a new perspective on the difficulties they need to overcome.
Exploring themes of regret, despair, uncertainty, grief, sacrifice, and hope, Before the Coffee Gets Cold became an international bestseller and led to several sequels and a film adaptation. Having begun his literary career as a playwright and play director, Kawaguchi adapted the novel from an award-winning play he wrote. Published in the original Japanese in 2015, the novel was translated into English in 2019.
