Japanese, Chinese, Korean & Other Literature Books

In this intoxicating stream-of-consciousness novel, Mieko Kanai tackles the existential traps of motherhood, marriage, and domestic captivity   The apparently unremarkable Natsumi lives in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband and two sons: she...

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin...

For the characters in after the quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight...

A piercing and passionate novel, set in rural Argentina, about violence and masculinityOscar Tamai and Elvio Miranda, the patriarchs of two families of brickmakers, have for years nursed a mutual hatred, but their teenage sons, Pájaro and Ángelito,...

A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea's most prominent young writers.In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the...

Winner of the inaugural Novel Prize, an elegant and subtle exploration of the mysteries of our relationships to others.  A mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo: they walk along the canals through the autumn evenings, escape the...

A funny, transporting, surprising, and poignant novel that was one of the highest-selling debuts of recent years in Korea, Love in the Big City tells the story of a young gay man searching for happiness in the lonely city of Seoul. Love in the Big...

A hugely enjoyable, page-turning classic Japanese mystery with an ingenious conclusion from the author of The Decagon House Murders, translated into English for the first timeDon’t miss this beautifully constructed, highly entertaining and atmospheric...

The long-awaited first short story-collection by the author of the cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, tales of weird love, heartfelt friendships, and the unsettling nature of human existence   With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata is...

Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. Winner of the PEN Translates Award. A monumental first collection in English from Banu Mushtaq: lawyer, activist, champion of Muslim women, and winner of India’s highest literary honors. In the...

Finalist for the 2022 National Book Award in Translated Literature!   “Was desire something like being possessed by a nightmare?” Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does...

This cozy Korean bestseller invites readers into a warm, sunlit pottery studio where a burned-out young TV broadcast writer begins to heal, working the clay, piece by piece, season by season. After breaking down at the office and abruptly quitting...

Two novellas about domestic life, isolation, and the passing of time by one of the finest Italian writers of the twentieth century.Carmine, an architect, and Ivana, a translator, lived together long ago and even had a child, but the child died, and their...

A probing masterpiece-in-miniature of self-reflection and cultural reckoning.The Times • 12 Best Books of 2024Financial Times • Best Books of 2024 [Fiction in Translation]A Vanity Fair "Can't Miss Novel to Read"Literary Hub • Best...

What will you get for your birthday this year? A chance to see into the future? Or a reminder of the imperfect past?In this enviable gathering, Haruki Murakami has chosen for his party some of the very best short story writers of recent years, each with...

From the acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes comes Secret Rendezvous, the bizarrely erotic and comic adventures of a man searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital.From the moment that an ambulance...

Like an elegantly chilling postscript to The Metamorphosis, this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed...

A fully illustrated, beautifully produced edition of Junichiro Tanizaki's wise and evocative essay on Japanese culture.'We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another...

The fourth novel in the internationally bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series, following a new group of customers in a magical time-traveling Tokyo caféThe regulars at Café Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with the whimsical...

Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone untill he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in...