Japanese, Chinese, Korean & Other Literature Books

From the National Book Award winning author, an extraordinary, ground-breaking, epic multi-generational novel about a Korean family living under Japanese occupation.In 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea, Lee Woo-cheol was a running prodigy and a contender for...

From the writer of the classic Letters to a Young Poet, reflections on grief and loss, collected and published here in one volume for the first time.“A great poet’s reflections on our greatest mystery.”—Billy...

In his Lives of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance, Vasari demonstrated a literary talent that outshone even his outstanding abilities as a painter and architect. Through character sketches and anecdotes he depicts Piero di Cosimo shut away in his...

A collection of some of Tolstoy's most powerful powerful stories.The violent spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life that inspired his last period of creativity produced the stories in this compelling and startling collection. They portray the multifaceted...

Here are some of Tolstoy's extraordinary short stories, from "The Death of Ivan Ilyich." in a masterly new translation, to "The Raid," "The Wood-felling," "Three Deaths," "Polikushka," "After the Ball," and "The Forged Coupon," all gripping and eloquent...

Tolstoy's powerful semiautobiographical stories based on his time spent in the Russian army, part of our series of fresh new Tolstoy translationsIn 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army. The four years he spent as a soldier were...

The ten stories collected in this volume demonstrate Tolstoy's artistic prowess displayed over five decades - experimenting with prose styles and drawing on his own experiences with humour, realism and compassion. Inspired by his experiences in the army,...

Rico, Mark, Paul and Daniel were 13 when the Berlin Wall fell in autumn 1989. Growing up in Leipzig at the time of reunification, they dream of a better life somewhere beyond the brewery quarter. Every night they roam the streets,...

A heartwarming and quietly profound story-within-a-story novel from the author of The Cat and The City, Four Seasons in Japan follows a Tokyo translator who stumbles upon a mysterious book left on the subway about a stern grandmother...

'It was a very momentous day, the day on which I was to be slaughtered'Bringing together tales of melancholy and madness, nightmare and fantasy, this is a new collection of the most haunting German stories from the past 200 years. Ranging from the...

Returning to Russia from a tour in Italy, twenty-three-year-old Dimitry Sanin breaks his journey in Frankfurt. There he encounters the beautiful Gemma Roselli, who works in her parents' patisserie, and falls deeply and deliriously in love for the first...

A wonderfully enjoyable storehouse of ancient Chinese history and legends, which also has an important role in understanding 21st-century China'And remember: Heaven's blessing will cease forever if there's despair and poverty in your lands'The Most...

Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata's The Sound of the Mountain is a beautiful rendering of the predicament of old age -- the gradual, reluctant narrowing of a human life, along with the sudden upsurges of passion that illuminate its closing.   By day...

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. In this world, the fates of two people, Tengo and Aomame, are closely intertwined. They are each, in their own way, doing...

A New York Times bestselling author—and “a mythmaker for the millennium, a wiseacre wiseman” (New York Times Book Review)—delivers a surreal and elaborate quest that takes readers from Tokyo to the remote mountains of northern...

In this classic Japanese locked room mystery an amateur detective investigates a string of gruesome unsolved murders. Astrologer, fortuneteller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must solve a macabre murder mystery that has baffled Japan for 40...

A seductive, disorienting novel that manipulates the fragile line between dreams and reality, by South Korea's leading contemporary writer   A startling and boundary-pushing novel , Untold Night and Day tells the story of a young woman's journey through...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   "A mesmerizing new historical novel" (O, The Oprah Magazine) from Lisa See, the bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island...

A hilarious and heartfelt novel perfect for fans of To All the Boys I've Loved Before and The Princess DiariesIzumi Tanaka has lived an uneventful seventeen years in her small town, keenly aware of all the ways in which her family is different from most...

Olga Tokarczuk turns from the roving, travelling kaleidoscope of Flights to a fabulous, ecological neo-noir. Mike, manager of our Bridport shop, neatly describes the novel as ‘a book that is in every way not bland’, the tale’s central...