Japanese, Chinese, Korean & Other Literature Books

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 young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he's ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and...

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living...

A philosophical novel described by fellow existentialist Sartre as 'perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood' of his novels, Albert Camus' The Fall is translated by Robin Buss in Penguin Modern Classics.Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a soul in...

(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...

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREThe diary of one of France’s most important, award-winning writers during the year she had a passionate and secret love affair with a Russian diplomatGetting Lost is the diary Annie Ernaux kept...

A woman finds herself filling a pit in the forest in the middle of the night; a family lock each other in their bedrooms to battle a strange plague; a wizard punishes two beautiful ballerinas by turning them into one hugely fat circus performer; a...

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...

From the author of the International Booker Prize-winning Time Shelter comes another mind-expanding adventure in the realms of memory, empathy and the history we can't escape, as the unnamed narrator tries to live with a pathological condition that...

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...

'And so, with great care, he planted his hundred acorns' While hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a solitary shepherd called Elzéard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches...

An excoriating - and extremely funny - satire of China's Cultural Revolution and the bureaucratic madness that followed the fall of Mao, Wang Xiaobo's masterpiece is available for the first time in a full English translation. The bestselling novel by...

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...

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...

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...

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...

A piercing and passionate novel, set in rural Argentina, about violence and masculinityOscar Tamai and Elvio Miranda, the patriarchs of two families of brickmakers, have for years nursed a mutual hatred, but their teenage sons, Pájaro and Ángelito,...

A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea's most prominent young writers.In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the...

Winner of the inaugural Novel Prize, an elegant and subtle exploration of the mysteries of our relationships to others.  A mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo: they walk along the canals through the autumn evenings, escape the...

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...