Japanese, Chinese, Korean & Other Literature Books

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...

Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung.Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the...

Author of the acclaimed novel Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor leads us into a different kind of hell: paradise   Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to...

“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...

A counter-prophet attempts the impossible to prove his power; a girl sees the hideous fate of her sister and father in a mirror bought from a gypsy; the death of a prostitute causes an unanticipated uprising; and the lives of every ordinary person since...

A celebrated new translation of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece reveals the “social problems facing our own society” (Nation). Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment has left...

For the first time—and in the best translation ever—the complete Book of Disquiet, a masterpiece beyond comparison. The Book of Disquiet is the Portuguese modernist master Fernando Pessoa’s greatest literary achievement. An...

Essentially the start of Dazai's career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them–a theme...

A fully illustrated, beautifully produced edition of Junichiro Tanizaki's wise and evocative essay on Japanese culture.'We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another...

Two brilliant, multi-layered stories from the winner of the Kenzaburo Oe Prize: part of our Japanese novella series, showcasing the best contemporary Japanese writing.On the eve of the Iraq War, a man and a woman meet in a nightclub in Tokyo. They go to...

What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it.A restless retail...

Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly alone untill he becomes an acolyte at a famous temple in...

After the early death of her philandering husband, Etsuko moves into her father-in-law's house, where she numbly submits to the old man's advances. But soon she finds herself in love with the young servant Saburo. Tormented by his indifference, yet...

Special collectors' hardback editions lovingly restored to original designs'I love these editions-so beautifully produced, so solid and permanent, just as Tove Jansson deserved.' Philip PullmanA beautiful collectors' edition of this classic Moomin story,...

(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...

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...

The power dynamics of the office are never more obvious than when it comes to food: mandatory lunches with the boss, the colleague who tries to curry favour with home-baked goods, discovering the discarded remnants of someone else's late-night binge . . ...

Finally back in print, a frighteningly lucid feminist horror story about marriageThe Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement: “I shot him between the eyes.” As the tale—a plunge into the chilly waters of...

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...

It is time that Kenji Miyazawa, long recognized as a writer of genius in his own country, enjoyed the same reputation abroad. Are his fables, in which acorns quarrel and flowers fret about losing their looks, written for children or adults? They are for...