Bestsellers

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its...

Translated by Polly Barton The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story. There...

Translated by Jim Rion A Japanese mystery bestseller, revolving around a series of unsettling floorplans, in which the reader is the detective - from the Youtube sensation Uketsu A sinister...

A victorian epic transplanted to Japan, following a Korean family of immigrants through eight decades and four generations. 'This is a captivating book ... Min Jin Lee's novel takes us...

Set in an alternate matriarchal 1900’s Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steampunk, MONSTRESS tells the story of a teenage girl who is struggling to survive the...

Translated by Philip Gabriel, a translator of Murakami A #1 Japanese bestseller and winner of the influential Japan booksellers' award. For fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, fairy tale...

Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori Mind-blowing, dark and wild, the new novel from Sayaka Murata — author of bestseller Convenience Store Woman — asks: how far would you go just...

'Tawada's strange, exquisite book toys with ideas of language, identity and what it means to own someone else's story or one's own' The New Yorker on Tawada's Memoirs of a Polar Bear Are you formed...

The tale of a cat with no name but great wisdom! Illustrated by Zack Davisson and Chiroru Kobato Japan's beloved literary masterpiece brought to life in manga form! Soseki Natsume's...

The first English language publication of the work of Izumi Suzuki, a legend of Japanese science fiction and a countercultural icon. On a planet where men are contained in ghettoised...

"Normality is the creepiest madness there is..."From the author of the bestselling literary sensations Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings comes a surprising and highly imaginative story set in a version of Japan where sex...

Translated by Polly Barton LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE An extraordinary, thrilling novel about sex, disability and powerBorn with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spine curvature...

A New York Times 'Notable Book of 2020' One of Elena Ferrante's 'Top 40 Books by Female Authors' 'A sharply observed and heartbreaking portrait of what it means to be...

Translated by Alison Watts THE TWO-MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING INTERNATIONAL NOVEL The irresistible hardback Times bestseller and bookshop favourite about the healing power of books and community; Time magazine Top 100 books of 2023; 'An undeniable...

Translated by Jim Rion Eleven strange buildings. One terrible secret.A lonely hut in the woods.A murder house.A hidden chamber.A mysterious shrine.A home in flames.A nightmarish prison...Each of the buildings in...

The third novel in the international bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold, following four new customers in a cafe where customers can travel back in time. In northern Japan, overlooking...

Winner of the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Prize for Literature The inaugural winner of The Novel Prize, an international biennial award established by Giramondo (Australia), Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and New Directions...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2022 From the bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs and international literary sensation Mieko Kawakami, comes a sharp and illuminating novel about a teenage...

Translated by Morgan Giles For readers of BREASTS AND EGGS and CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN comes Junko Takase's Akutagawa Prize-winning novel about the pressures of modern life, and the pleasure of...

A charming and heartwarming Japanese tale about the importance and magic of books, for all who love reading them. Grandpa used to say it all the time: books have tremendous...

Translated by Yuka Maeno There is a small cafe in Tokyo where something unusual is brewing... Twenty-nine-year-old Momoko has been tragically dumped. She thought she and her boyfriend were in...

Translated by Margaret Mitsutani Yoshiro celebrated his hundredth birthday many years ago, but every morning before work he still goes running in the park with his rent-a-dog. He is one...

Translated by Emily Balistrieri *SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE* An unfulfilled college student hurtles through four parallel realities to explore the what-might've-been and the what-should-never-be in this Groundhog Day...

The second volume of legendary animation director Hayao Miyazaki’s career memoir continues with essays, interviews, and discussions about some of his most popular films, including Spirited Away and Ponyo. In...

Japan's most popular filmmaker speaks on life, love, and the world of anime. The Starting Point...of the Greatest Career in Animation History In the first two decades of his career,...

Translated by Polly Barton ‘Tender and thrilling it’s Yuzuki at her best’ ELLE A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 IN GUARDIAN, VOGUE, NEW YORK TIMES, FORBES, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES STYLE, ELLE, STYLIST, BBC, GRAZIA, BRICKS MAGAZINE, RADIO TIMES, LITHUB, OPRAH DAILY and DAILY EXPRESS. The...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksKikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father, only to find that the mistress' rival...

Translated by Allison Markin Powell A moving portrayal of a troubled mother–daughter relationship, shortlisted for Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize. In 2008, the unnamed narrator of Gifted is working as a...

Translated by Louise Heal Kawai  'The Japanese Agatha Christie' Sarah Cox, on BBC2's Between the Covers'The master of ingenious plotting' Guardian'Dazzling' New York TimesFROM THE FATHER OF JAPANESE CRIMEIn the winter of 1937,...

Stop people-pleasing and achieve true happiness.Millions have already benefited from the wisdom dispensed in The Courage to Be Disliked, its simple yet profound advice showing us how to harness our inner...

THE DEBUT NOVEL THAT'LL STEAL YOUR HEARTSHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2024 An exquisite debut novel weaving together the voices of three young women in Japan and the...

Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd The acclaimed and bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs and Heaven returns with a blistering, shocking and poetic story about...

WINNER OF THE 2021 AKUTAGAWA PRIZE A bestselling and award-winning Japanese phenomenon - about obsession, pop culture and fandom 'My oshi was on fire. Word was he'd punched a fan'...

Kitchen juxtaposes two tales about mothers, transsexuality, bereavement, kitchens, love and tragedy in contemporary Japan. It is a startlingly original first work by Japan's brightest young literary star and is...

Translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio In Sisters in Yellow, International Booker–shortlisted literary sensation Mieko Kawakami serves us a thrilling, stylish noir of buried secrets and shocking acts. Hana has...

Translated by Jesse Kirkwood The award-winning, bestselling Japanese phenomenon. A propulsive, prophetic novel about the beauty of language and the nature of identity in the age of AI.Welcome to the...

Nao lives in Tokyo. She is sixteen, and has decided to write a diary before she kills herself. She has plenty of material — school bullies, depressed parents — but...

Translated by Allison Markin Powell An award-winning novel from one of Japan's most exciting literary voices: a short, simple and touching story of an unlikely love that blossoms across generations,...

Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori  The heartbreaking story of two orphans fighting for survival at the end of World War Two, published in English for the first time. In the...

Translated by Nick Bradley Discover the original Japanese Cat classic, now in a vibrant new translation by Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the City.'I am a Cat. But I...

A Novel Full of Opportunity Translated by Takami Nieda Combining the whimsy and possibility of The Midnight Library with the mystery and revelatory power of The Secret, Come along for...

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksAll moonlight is moving, wherever it may be...Japanese gentlewoman Sei Shonagon invites us to look behind the painted screens in the Emperor's...

A Graphic Memoir of Self-Discovery A poignant young adult graphic memoir that follows one teen's year abroad in Japan, as she seeks to reconcile both sides of her biracial identity....

Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter No Longer Human is the story of Yozo Oba, who, from early childhood, finds it impossible to form meaningful relationships with family or friends. As a...

One of the launch titles for the new World Vegetarian series, Reiko Hashimoto celebrates the incredible vegetarian cuisine of Japan One of the first books in a brand-new series, Reiko...

Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins From the author of Winter in Sokcho, which won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The days are beginning to draw in. The...

Translated by Jesse Kirkwood An ingenious Japanese crime novel with a brilliant Groundhog Day twist: a teenager’s time-loop race to solve—and possibly prevent—his grandfather’s murder! Contemporary Japanese legend Yasuhiko Nishizawa...

Rin is flying back from her honeymoon. She's madly in love with her husband, Shin, and the future looks rosy. Then Shin disappears to the bathroom while he thinks Rin...

Translated by Polly Barton Piercing, inventive, and darkly humorous, the fifty-two stories in Aoko Matsuda's The Woman Dies explore the persistent and pervasive sexism faced by women in modern-day Japan.The...

Translated by Margaret Mitsutani **Winner of The Yomiuri Prize for Literature, 2012** The Japanese novel comes of age in this gripping story of love, art and life as a group...