Japanese, Chinese, Korean & Other Literature Books

Korea’s most prized literary masterpiece: a Buddhist journey questioning the illusions of human life—presented in a vivid new translation by PEN/Hemingway finalist Heinz Insu Fenkl*Named one of the year's most anticipated books by The...

“A beautiful, hallucinatory dream of a novel.” –J.M. Miro, Author of the National Bestseller Ordinary Monsters “A fantastically moody, unsettling novel."–Sarah Waters, New York Times bestselling author of The...

'What is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.'Autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday...

In The Possessed, Witold Gombrowicz, considered by many to be Poland’s greatest modernist, draws together the familiar tropes of the Gothic novel to produce a darkly funny and playful subversion of the form. With dreams of...

The bestselling international sensation, coming soon to Netflix, now in English for the first time—a dark, sexy, haunting novel of two very damaged teens who are taken in by the same foster family and forced to reckon with a destructive...

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023 In her old house by the fjord, Signe lies on a bench and sees a vision of herself as she was more than twenty years earlier: standing by the window waiting for her husband Asle, on that terrible late...

Pulitzer-Prize-winning Jhumpa Lahiri is back with a gorgeous collection of shorts. These stories take place in a Rome that few have ever seen, delivering a meaningful exploration of the immigrant experience that lands with a resounding effect.The first...

An extraordinary masterpiece of German literature, now in a gripping new English translation   Michael Kohlhaas has been wronged. First his finest horses were unfairly confiscated and mistreated. And things keep going worse—his servants have...

Discover the new Penguin Crime and Espionage seriesA stolen weapon. A troubled young man. A race against time...Inspector Maigret receives a call from his wife to say he has a visitor at their apartment. But when he gets home, the young man has already...

Squid Game meets The Left Hand of Darkness meets Under the Skin in this radical literary sensation from South Korea about an alien's hunt for food that transforms into an existential crisis about what it means to be human...

A surprising and moving novella about a misunderstood neurodivergent girl from one of Japan's most acclaimed young writers, the author of The Woman in the Purple SkirtA sensitive and tender depiction of belonging and neurodivergence, perfect for...

'I have become whore through goodwill and libertine through virtue.'Orphaned and penniless at the age of twelve, the beautiful and devout Justine embarks upon her remarkable odyssey. Her steadfast faith and naive trust in trust in everyone she meets...

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...

Of all the great Japanese novelists, Kobe Abe was indubitably the most versatile. With The Ruined Map, he crafted a mesmerizing literary crime novel that combines the narrative suspense of Chandler with the psychological depth of Dostoevsky.Mr...

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...

The Age of Doubt collects some of Pak Kyongni’s most famous works, including her 1955 debut and other stories featuring characters that would appear in her 21-volume epic, Toji. Many of Pak’s stories reflect her own turbulent experiences...

Before the Coffee Gets Cold meets Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore in this whimsical, poignant novel about the inner workings of a department store that sells dreamsTHE #1 KOREAN BESTSELLER WITH OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLDIn a...

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...

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2023. Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbour, Asleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city...