Genre: Fiction
-
Strange Weather in Tokyo
Tsukiko, thirty-eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, “Sensei,” in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him “Sensei” (“Teacher”). He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each […]
-
Toddler Hunting and Other Stories
Winner of Japan’s top literary prizes (the Akutagawa, the Tanizaki, the Noma, and the Yomiuri), Taeko Kono writes with a strange beauty: her tales are pinpricked with disquieting scenes, her characters all teetering on self-dissolution, especially in the context of their intimate relationships. In the title story, the protagonist loathes young girls but compulsively buys […]
-
The whale that fell in love with a submarine.
A whale falls in love with a military submarine, and dies courting her; a mother caught in a fire following a bombing gives all her body’s water to save her son, and her desiccated form turns into a kite; a wolf rescues a sick child abandoned by her parents, only to die himself at the […]
-
The secret of the blue glass
In a dusty library, in the quietest corner of a house in a Tokyo suburb, live the Little People: Fern and Balbo, Robin and Iris. Just a few inches high, sleeping in cigarette boxes and crafting shoes from old book jackets, they need only one thing from their Humans, a nightly glass of milk, served […]
-
Last winter, we parted
A young writer is assigned a difficult task by his editor: he is to write an investigative biography of a death row inmate named Yudai Kiharazaka, a thirty-five-year-old photographer who has been convicted of the murders of two women. Kiharazaka’s victims—or his “models”—had been burned alive while the photographer tried to capture the perfect picture […]
-
Confessions
After calling off her engagement in wake of a tragic revelation, Yuko Moriguchi had nothing to live for except her only child, four-year-old Manami. Now, following an accident on the grounds of the middle school where she teaches, Yuko has given up and tendered her resignation. But first she has one last lecture to deliver. […]
-
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
The new novel—a book that sold more than a million copies the first week it went on sale in Japan—from the internationally acclaimed author, his first since 1Q84. Here he gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for […]
-
The square persimmon, and other stories
Short stories.
-
Napoleon crazy and other stories
Short stories.
-
All you need is kill
There’s only one thing worse than dying. It’s coming back to do it again and again….