This month we’re reading novels translated from Japanese, Spanish, French, Italian and Turkish.

The Pachinko Parlour by Elisa Shua Dusapin (translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins)

It is summer in Tokyo. Claire finds herself dividing her time between tutoring twelve-year-old Mieko in an apartment in an abandoned hotel and lying on the floor at her grandparents.

The plan is for Claire to visit Korea with her grandparents. They fled the civil war there over fifty years ago, along with thousands of others, and haven’t been back since. When they first arrived in Japan, they opened Shiny, a pachinko parlour. Shiny is still open, drawing people in with its bright, flashing lights and promises of good fortune. And as Mieko and Claire gradually bond, their tender relationship growing, Mieko’s determination to visit the pachinko parlour builds.

Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot)

In northern Japan, overlooking the spectacular view Hakodate Port has to offer, Cafe Donna Donna has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

This is the third novel in the international bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, following four new customers in a cafe where customers can travel back in time.

At the Breakfast Table by Defne Suman (translated from the Turkish by Betsy Göksel)

Buyukada, Turkey, 2017. In the glow of a late summer morning, family gather for the 100th birthday of the famous artist Sirin Saka. It ought to be a time of fond reminiscence, looking back on a long and fruitful artistic career, on memories spanning almost a century, but also of an era when imperial forces fought over her homeland. But the deep past is something Sirin has spent a lifetime trying to conceal.

Her grandchildren and great grandchild do not know what Sirin is hiding, though they are intimately aware of the secret’s psychological consequences. The siblings hope, with help, hope to unravel the family secrets and persuade her to finally talk …

Retrospective by Juan Gabriel Vasquez (translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean)

In October 2016, the real-life Colombian film director Sergio Cabrera is attending a retrospective of his films in Barcelona. It’s a difficult time for him: his father, Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war.

In the course of a few turbulent and intense days, Sergio will recall the events that marked the family’s life, and especially his father’s, his sister Marianella’s and his own.

Just a Boy by Elena Varvello (translated from the Italian by Alex Valente)

The boy is almost eighteen and has a loving family. He’s polite and well-educated, quiet but always smiling. When word spreads that he has broken into and stolen from a neighbour’s house, his parents and sisters can’t believe it. Then the unthinkable happens: an attack that will rip through the town and his family for years to come.

Just a Boy is a gripping, incisive novel about secrets, adolescence and how we can love someone - a child, a partner - without ever knowing their mind.