Japanese, Chinese, Korean & Other Literature Books

The Osugi family have come to a realisation. Each of them hails from a different planet. Father from Mars, mother from Jupiter, son from Mercury and daughter from Venus. Already seen as oddballs in their small Japanese town in the 1960s, this...

Exhilarating, important and uplifting, this unforgettable novel about resilience and the search for freedom follows five women from highly different backgrounds as they set up a commune in an abundant garden on the outskirts of Tehran. Longlisted for...

From the International Booker Shortlisted author of Still Born, a powerful collection of stories about characters coping with estrangement, isolation, and the unknown.   Acclaimed for her piercing insights and razor-sharp prose, award winning...

Dostoevsky’s final, greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, paints a complex and richly detailed portrait of a family tormented by its extraordinarily cruel patriarch, Fyodor Pavlovich, whose callous decisions slowly decimate the lives of his...

A novel from "one of the outstanding writers of the world” (The New York Times) that explores the vicious nature of youth that is sometimes mistaken for innocence. • “A major work of art...

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 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...

“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...

From the author of The Door and Abigail and for fans of Elena Ferrante and Clarice Lispector, a newly translated novel about a theater star who is forced to reckon with her painful and tragic past.In The Door, in Iza’s...

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...

Korean historical drama meets murder mystery in this propulsive detective story perfect for fans of Holly Jackson.June Hur, bestselling author of The Red Palace, crafts a devastating and pulse-pounding tale that will feel all-too-relevant in...

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...

Junichirō Tanizaki's magisterial evocation of a proud Osaka family in decline during the years immediately before World War II is arguably the greatest Japanese novel of the twentieth century and a classic of international literature. Tsuruko, the eldest...

Narrated by a ghost, this unusual narrative written in a haunting and poetic voice is a fresh, subtly political take on class and memory, family and trauma. It's all about the importance of human connection and the unending search for it. It may be...