Asian Literature

After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. Soon interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests and what follows is a madcap comedy of...

Yoshiro thinks he might never die. A hundred years old and counting, he is one of Japan's many 'old-elderly'; men and women who remember a time before the air and the sea were poisoned, before terrible catastrophe promted Japan to shut itself off from...

From the author of the internationally bestselling Strange Weather in Tokyo, a collection of interlinking stories that masterfully blend the mundane and the mythical—"fairy tales in the best Brothers Grimm tradition: naïf, magical, and frequently veering...

We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps find them.Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner, run by Chef Nagare and his daughter, Koishi. The father-daughter duo have reinvented...

An intimate look at writing, running, and the incredible way they intersect, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is an illuminating glimpse into the solitary passions of one of our greatest artists.While training for the New York City Marathon,...

The story of an introverted young man coming of age in the 60's, which should provide plenty of context already. With the help of his first love, he breaks free of his reservedness and finds himself. If you've loved anything by Murakami, know that this...

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...

Oceans and decades apart, two women are inextricably bound by the secrets between them.Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura’s prearranged marriage would secure her family’s status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko...

Through eight 'biographies' of Korean women aged 10 to 80, the author of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 delivers a searing critique of the gender pressures and injustices rife in modern Korea. Eight women. Eight stories. One reality. A woman is born...

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force--and one of Haruki Murakami's most acclaimed and beloved novels.In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat--and then for his wife as well--in a netherworld beneath the...

Eyes mark the shape of the city. The midnight hour approaches in an almost-empty diner. Mari sips her coffee and reads a book, but soon her solitude is disturbed: a girl has been beaten up at the Alphaville hotel, and needs Mari's help. Meanwhile Mari's...

(Available after 3-20 days) A woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that requires no reading, no writing - and ideally, very little thinking.She is sent to an office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of...

Tsukiko is in her late 30s and living alone when one night she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, 'Sensei', in a bar. He is at least thirty years her senior, retired and, she presumes, a widower. After this initial encounter, the...

(Available on July 8, 2021)Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano,...

The long-awaited first short story-collection by the author of the cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, tales of weird love, heartfelt friendships, and the unsettling nature of human existence   With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata is...

The million-copy bestselling series.Now as a beautiful, collectible hardback - the perfect gift.Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s moving Before the Coffee Gets Cold, translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, explores the age-old question: what would you...

Haunting, elegiac and profound, Where Reasons End charts the process of parental grief through a mother’s imagined conversation with her dead son. With lyrical economy and deep compassion, Li crafts a tender, humane novel of love, loss and...

Written when Mishima was only twentysix, Forbidden Colors is a depiction of a male homosexual relationship, in which a rich older man buys the love of a young man who is stunningly handsome but who lacks the ability to love. As in Mann's Death in Venice,...

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...

A beautifully packaged hardback edition of Haruki Murakami's mesmerizingly surreal classic, now with a new introduction by the authorKafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy.The aging Nakata,...