Japanese Fiction
One Hundred Poems From The Japanese
$17.95 – Paperback book / New Directions
Now in its 23rd printing Rexroth's famous anthology of classic Japanese poems. The sound of the Japanese texts is reproduced in Romji script and the names of the poets in the calligraphy of Ukai Uchiyama. With a translat... Buy or find out more →
The Temple Of The Golden Pavilion
$12.95 – Trade paperback / Vintage
Bringing together Mishima's preoccupations with violence, desire, religious life and the history of Japan, this novel is based on an actual incident, the burning of a celebrated temple. The novel is a meditation on the s... Buy or find out more →
Silence
$16.95 – Paperback book /
A novel of faith and doubt set in medieval Japan. Endo relates the history of the Japanese Christians who were persecuted after the rise to power of the samurai in the 17th century, and in particular the plight of Japane... Buy or find out more →
Forbidden Colours
$24.95 – Paperback book / Penguin Books
Shinsuké is an ageing author whose books present women as creatures of marble perfection, but whose diary contains his true opinion - a disdainful and bilious loathing, engendered by three marriages and countless affairs... Buy or find out more →
After Dark
$19.95 – Paperback book / Vintage
The midnight hour approaches in an almost empty all-night diner. Mari sips her coffee and glances up from a book as a young man, a musician, intrudes on her solitude. Both have missed the last train home. The musician ha... Buy or find out more →
Blind Willow Sleeping Woman
$19.95 – Paperback book / Vintage
Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii or in the ... Buy or find out more →
Rashomon And Seventeen Other Stories
$26.95 – Paperback book / Penguin Books
Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is one of Japan's foremost stylists – a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. Rashomon and In a Bamboo Grove inspi... Buy or find out more →
Kafka On The Shore
$19.95 – Paperback book / Vintage
KAFKA ON THE SHORE follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recover... Buy or find out more →
Tale Of Genji
$45.00 – Paperback book / Penguin
Written in the eleventh century, this exquisite portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan is widely celebrated as the world’s first novel. Genji, the Shining Prince, is the son of an emperor. He is a passionate charact... Buy or find out more →
Beauty And Sadness
$23.95 – Paperback book / Vintage
"This is the final novel by one of Japan's foremost writers who died by his own hand without explanation in April 1972. The theme of this work blends two of his previous writings into narrative form—Kawa-bata's acceptanc... Buy or find out more →
The Elephant Vanishes
$19.95 – Paperback book / Vintage
This collection of stories exposes Japan as it is experienced from the inside. The stories take place in parallel worlds, not so much remote from normal life as hidden beneath its surface. When a man's favourite elephant... Buy or find out more →
South Of The Border, West Of The Sun
$19.95 – Paperback book / Vintage
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 ... Buy or find out more →
Sputnik Sweetheart
$19.95 – Paperback book / Harvill
Twenty-two year-old Sumire is in love for the first time - with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is a glamorous and successful older woman with a taste for classical music and fine wine, Sumire is an a... Buy or find out more →
Wild Sheep Chase
$19.95 – Paperback book / Vintage
His life was like his recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold... Buy or find out more →
Sound Of Waves
$21.95 – Paperback book / Alfred A Knopf
Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. A young fisherman is entranced at the sight of the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. They fall in lov... Buy or find out more →
Kitchen
$19.95 – Paperback book / Faber
When Kitchen was first published in Japan in 1987 it won two of Japan's most prestigious literary prizes, climbed its way to the top of the bestseller lists, then remained there for over a year and sold millions of copie... Buy or find out more →
Dance Dance Dance
$19.95 – Paperback book / Vintage
High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic thirteen year-old drop-out with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hot... Buy or find out more →
Key
$12.95 – Trade paperback / Vintage
This year I intend to begin writing freely about a topic which, in the past, I have hesitated to mention even here. I have always avoided commenting on my sexual relations with Ikuko, for fear that she might surreptitiou... Buy or find out more →
The Housekeeper And The Professor
$20.95 – Paperback book / Picador
He is a brilliant math professor, with a peculiarn problem--since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young housekeeper with a ten-year-old son who is hir... Buy or find out more →
Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World
$19.95 – Trade paperback / Vintage
A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all r... Buy or find out more →
Narrow Road To The Deep North
$9.95 – Paperback book / Penguin
In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. When he composed The Narrow Road to the Deep North he was a serious student of Zen Buddhism setting o... Buy or find out more →