Japanese, Chinese, Korean & Other Literature Books

Time is broken (but not meaningless) in this mind-bending installment in an epic seven-volume series of novels that rewrite time and history of the world as we know it.“A literary phenomenon nearly forty years in the making, and a speculative...

Shanghai, 1930s. Shen Shijun, a young engineer, has fallen in love with his colleague, the beautiful Gu Manzhen. He is determined to resist his family’s efforts to match him with his wealthy cousin so that he can marry her. But dark...

Life after crime from the International Booker-shortlisted author of Elena Knows. Fifteen years after killing her husband’s lover, Inés is fresh out of prison and trying to put together a new life. Her old friend Manca is out now too, and...

'And so, with great care, he planted his hundred acorns' While hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a solitary shepherd called Elzéard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches...

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...

He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury seventeen years ago, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper who is entrusted to take care...

A young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he's ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and...

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...

(Available after 3-20 days)Communication—or the lack thereof—is the subject of this sly update of the picaresque novel. No One Writes Back is the story of a young man who leaves home with only his blind dog, an MP3 player, and a book, traveling aimlessly...

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREThe diary of one of France’s most important, award-winning writers during the year she had a passionate and secret love affair with a Russian diplomatGetting Lost is the diary Annie Ernaux kept...

“Vita Nostra” — a cross between Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians” and Elizabeth Kostova’s “The Historian” [...] is the anti-Harry Potter you didn’t know you wanted.” — The Washington Post   “Vita Nostra has become a powerful influence on my own writing...

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...

Japan’s internationally celebrated master storyteller returns with five stories of women on their way to healing that vividly portrays the blissful moments and everyday sorrows that surround us in everyday life.A New York Times Notable Book"This is...

A symphony of interconnected lives that offers a compelling reflection on life in modern-day metropolises at the intersection of isolation and intimacy in Yoshida’s English-language debut. Set over several nights, between the hours of 1:00 a.m. and...

Wes Anderson on Stefan Zweig:  "I had never heard of Zweig...when I just more or less by chance bought a copy of Beware of Pity. I loved this first book.  I also read the The Post-OfficeGirl.  The Grand Budapest Hotel has elements that...

Tolstoy’s titanic masterpiece redefined world literature and shifted the boundaries of psychological realism in the novel. Set during the maelstrom of Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion of Russia, War and Peace focuses on the inner lives and...

WINNER OF THE MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE • When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private...

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...

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...

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...