Japan

Translated by Stephen Snyder A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool - sparking an...

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 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...

Discover Haruki Murakami's first two novels.Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami's two first novels - here they are together in one edition.Now I think it's time to tell my...

The haunting, enigmatic love story that turned Murakami into a literary superstar in Japan, and is his bestselling title throughout the worldAutumn 1969, and soon I would be 20.When he...

Haruki Murakami's third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase is the mystery hybrid which completes the odyssey begun in Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973.The man was leading an aimless life, time passing, one big...

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025 A story of the lives of the three people who make a family, the one moment in history that shatters what held them together,...

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...

WINNER OF THE AKUTAGAWA PRIZE In the summer of 2020, as Germany slowly emerges from lockdown, a young Japanese woman studying in Gottingen waits at the train station to meet...

Translated by Chi-Young Kim An award-winning and movingly introspective exploration of life, art and love from South Korea 'If you wanted to end your life instantly, perfectly, you needed practice...

Translated by Allison Markin Powell 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...

Translated by Allison Markin Powell From the bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo, here is a story of treasure hoarders, bargain hunters and would-be lovers Among the jumble of...

Translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda Vibrating with the injustices of class and gender, tradition and power, Swallows is an acerbic, witty vision of contemporary Japan by Natsuo Kirino, acclaimed author of...

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...

The unmissable debut novel May 1998- Mimi Traung and her baby daughter Ngan wait restlessly at the gates of Philadelphia airport. There is still a day's travelling left before they...

Translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda An epic novel of postwar, nuclear-age Japan, by the author of Territory of LightMitch and Yonko haven't spoken in a year. As children, they were inseparable, raised...

A suspenseful tale of abduction, obsession and lost identity that spans Vietnam, East Berlin, West German and Paris - and fantasies of Catherine Deneuve. A young Vietnamese woman is invited...

A mesmerising novel by the author of Rainbirds and The Perfect Worldof Miwako Sumida about a young man trying to escape his past in Japan. When Shouji Arai crosses one...

Sisters Rei, Kiki and Ai have always had to look out for one another - but life has taken them on very different paths. Eldest daughter Rei is spiky and sensible, distracting...

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 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...

New to our Vintage Classics Murakami Collector's Library - a newly translated, unabridged edition of Murakami's most mind-bendingly brilliant novel. A special hardback edition of Murakami's surreal, mind-bending masterpiece, in...

In the Tokyo suburbs four women work the graveyard shift at a factory. Burdened with heavy debts, alienated from husbands and children, they all secretly dream of a way out...

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...

"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 Winner of the Akutagawa Prize, a sharp, photo-realistic novella of memory and thwarted hope set in modern-day Tokyo—an “unflinching . . . powerful” showcase of the best...

Translated by Asa Yoneda In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of...

Translated by Lucy North The Akutagawa Prize-winning stories from one of the most highly regarded and provocative contemporary Japanese writers: part of our Japanese novella series, showcasing the best contemporary...

Considered one of Mishima's masterpieces, this novel is a fictionalised version of real events - the torching of a Kyoto temple by a disturbed Buddhist acolyte in 1950.Mizoguchi grows up...

The second book in Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetraology - this is a story of political violence, traditional samurai values and nihilism.Isao is a young, engaging patriot, and a fanatical...

The fourth and final book in Mishima's landmark tetralogy, The Sea of FertilityThe dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility tetraology.It is the 1960s and Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, discovers...

The third novel in Mishima's masterful Sea of Fertility tetralogyMishima's literary powers are on full display in his penultimate novel, a meditation on reincarnation and Buddhist philosophy.Honda, a brilliant lawyer and man...

Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky... A bewitching and wildly inventive novel from a master stylist Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow...

Translated by Haydn Trowell In Schoolgirl, a wealthy housewife, dogged by ennui, struggles to connect with her teenage daughter, who turns to YouTube to vent her frustration with the climate...

In the late fifteenth century, a young Dominican friar sets out on a journey from Paris to Florence in search of manuscripts of pre-Christian philosophy. Along the way, he encounters...

Translated by Sam Bett For fans of No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai’s darkly bewitching novel about the small redemptions of being a pathetic, miserable writer. A fictional writer in his...

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, a breathtaking new novel about the boundaries between worlds and individuals, from the Sunday Times bestseller.When...

Translated by Edwin McClellan “Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature.” — Haruki Murukami One of the best-selling novels of all time in Japan:...

Translated by Van C. Gessel A group of Japanese tourists journey to the sacred River Ganges, each on a secret personal pilgrimage. Widower Isobe mourns for the devoted wife he...

A startling novella from the heir to Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Garcia Marquez 'I've never made it out of Tokyo. I can't tell you how many times I've asked myself...

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...

 'Flawless' – David Mitchell 'A masterpiece’ – Daily Telegraph Winner of the Tanizaki Prize  Published in 1967 in Japan to huge controversy, Silence is Shusaku Endo's most highly acclaimed novel and a classic...

A surprising and moving novella about a misunderstood neurodivergent girl from one of Japan's most acclaimed young writers, the author of The Woman in the Purple Skirt A sensitive and...

A madcap, darkly comic novel about the strange fate of a tone-deaf girl who just wants to sing, from a Japanese literary star “Abe's superpower is to transform everything he...

“Delicate and powerful... a haunting, sensitive meditation on memory as well as a wonderful introduction to a master sorely underappreciated in the West. . . timeless, elegiac, and masterful” –...

A story of friendship and family secrets in 1970s Japan, from the prizewinning author of The Memory Police. On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of...

A beautiful hardback edition of a great Japanese classic, beautiful, lyrical and deeply ominous. A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and...

Having married her childhood sweetheart, Riko now finds herself trapped in a relationship that has been soured by infidelity. One day, by chance, she runs into her old friend Mr...

Translated by Ted Goossen Included in The New Yorker's Best Books of 2023 Stories from a Japanese master of transformative fiction, where reality, myth, and human foibles meet shifting dimensions...

Translated by Jesse Kirkwood *WINNER OF THE AKUTAGAWA PRIZE, Japan's most prestigious literary award, first published when the author was just 24* *A Japanese contemporary classic, perfect for fans of...