Japanese, Chinese, Korean & Other Literature Books

Filled with striking, river-like sentences and plenty of humour, the opening volume of Proust’s modernist masterpiece covers the Narrator’s childhood in Combray – including perhaps the most famous cake-eating scene in the history of...

Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often...

A spellbinding novel that places one family’s tragedies against the uncontainable life force of the land itself.Near a village high in the Pyrenees, Domènec wanders across a ridge, fancying himself more a poet than a farmer, to “reel...

Zhao Yunlan is Chief of the Special Investigations Department: a secret group of uniquely skilled individuals who investigate strange happenings in modern-day Dragon City. Although laid-back and cheeky to those who don't know him, this tenacious and...

Among Dostoevsky's later novels, The Adolescent occupies a very special place: published three years after The Devils and five years before his final masterpiece, The Karamazov Brothers, the novel charts the story of nineteen-year-old Arkady – the...

Presented as a series of letters between the humble copying clerk Devushkin and a distant relative of his, the young Varenka, Poor People brings to the fore the underclass of St Petersburg, who live at the margins of society in the most appalling...

'After all that - how, you might wonder, could one not become a fatalist?' Lermontov's hero, Pechorin, is a young army officer posted to the Caucasus, where his adventures - amorous and reckless - do nothing to alleviate his boredom and cynicism...

Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, this is a unique and wonderfully creepy tale that is sure to delight Murakami fans. 'All I did was go to the library to borrow some books'. On his way home from school, the young narrator of The Strange Library...

The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as...

Beautiful, twisted and brilliant - discover Yoko Ogawa. A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool - sparking an unspoken infatuation that draws out darker possibilities. A...

In a crumbling, seaside hotel on the coast of Japan, quiet, seventeen-year-old Mari works the front desk as her mother fusses over the off-season customers. When, one night, they are forced to eject a prostitute and a middle-aged man from his room, Mari...

A woman goes into a bakery to buy a strawberry cream tart. The place is immaculate but there is no one serving so she waits. Another customer comes in.The woman tells the new arrival that she is buying her son a treat for his birthday. Every year she...

Shortlisted for the Man Booker International 2018From the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2016From the author of The Vegetarian and Human Acts comes a book like no other. The White Book is a meditation on colour,...

A short, brilliant book which gives a remarkable insight into the mind of a supremely gifted writer, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running details Murakakami’s athletic obsession and how it informs his art. Philosophical and reflective, this is a...

In 1940s Japan, the wealthy head of the Inugami Clan dies, and his family eagerly await the reading of the will. But no sooner are its strange details revealed than a series of bizarre, gruesome murders begins. Detective Kindaichi must unravel the clan's...

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene,...

The Honjin Murders is an engrossing piece of classic crime fiction from Seishi Yokomizo, the Japanese rival to Agatha Christie. The village of Okamura prepares for the wedding celebrations of the son of one its leading families, but then a masked man, a...

Publishing in English for the very first time, Japan's beloved coming of age classic on what really matters in life The streets of Tokyo swarm below fifteen year-old Copper as he gazes out into the city of his childhood. Struck by the thought of the...

Told from the perspective of a 14-year old boy subjected to relentless bullying, Heaven handles its difficult theme with both searing honesty and startling grace. From the bestselling author of Breast and Eggs and international literary sensation...

A haunting novella of fame and disillusionment by a Japanese literary icon.All eyes are upon Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer from a roped-off section, screaming and yelling to attract his attention. They would kill for a moment alone with...