Asian Literature

A short, brilliant book which gives a remarkable insight into the mind of a supremely gifted writer, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running details Murakakami’s athletic obsession and how it informs his art. Philosophical and reflective, this is a...

Over the course of his life, Mr Nishino falls hopelessly in love again and again. One woman is a colleague, another a chance encounter; one is the girlfriend of a classmate, another the best friend of Nishino's latest conquest. Some are entranced by...

Kobo Abe, the internationally acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes, combines wildly imaginative fantasies and naturalistic prose to create narratives reminiscent of the work of Kafka and Beckett.In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless...

Bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami invites readers back into her immediately recognizable fictional world with this new, extraordinary novel and demonstrates yet again why she is one of today’s most uncategorizable, insightful, and...

Winner of the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionLong-listed for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionA New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceA Slate Top Ten Book of the YearA TIME Best Fiction Book of 2022Named a Best Book of the...

The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada—one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan The English-language debut of one of Japan's most exciting new writers, The Factory follows three workers at a sprawling industrial factory. Each...

'A finely drawn evocation of Japan, of youth, age, dreams, disillusionment, struggles and strength... A poignant and beautiful book.' Hazel Prior, author of Away with the Penguins.From the author of The Cat and The City - 'vibrant and accomplished' David...

From the international best-selling author of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, a collection exploring the intimacies of contemporary Korean womanhood. A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman suffers domestic violence. A woman is...

In the much-anticipated follow-up to the bestselling and beloved The Travelling Cat Chronicles, seven cats weave their way through their owners’ lives, climbing, comforting, nestling, and sometimes just tripping everyone up in this uplifting...

Set in rural Japan shortly after World War II, this gripping novel tells the story of a strange and utterly absorbing love triangle that leads to psychological self-entrapment, seduction, and murder. “A compelling tale of love and violence...

Book Two of 1Q84 ended with Aomame standing on the Metropolitan Expressway with a gun between her lips. She knows she is being hunted, and that she has put herself in terrible danger in order to save the man she loves. But things are moving forward, and...

Growing up in the suburbs in post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But...

Dazzlingly original, Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes is one of the premier Japanese novels in the twentieth century, and this Penguin Classics edition contains a new introduction by David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas. Niki Jumpei, an amateur...

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...

The international literary icon opens his eclectic closet: Here are photographs of Murakami’s extensive and personal T-shirt collection, accompanied by essays that reveal a side of the writer rarely seen by the public.Many of Haruki Murakami's fans know...

One of the great Japanese murder mysteries, Takagi's audacious, brilliantly structured novel revolves around a killer with a seeming fetish for tattooed skin. Can you solve the mystery of the tattoo murder? Tokyo, 1947. At the first post-war meeting...

A classic Japanese mystery —a pair of sleuths investigate a series of bloody murders in 19th century TokyoA captivating locked room murder mystery perfect for fans of Stuart Turton and Janice HallettJapan, 1869. A time of reform and rebellion...

Set in rural Japan shortly after World War II, this gripping novel tells the story of a strange and utterly absorbing love triangle that leads to psychological self-entrapment, seduction, and murder. • “A compelling tale of love...

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 successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as...