Genre: Fiction
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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The square persimmon, and other stories
Short stories.
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Napoleon crazy and other stories
Short stories.
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All you need is kill
There’s only one thing worse than dying. It’s coming back to do it again and again….
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Slum online
Etsuro Sakagami is a college freshman who simply drifts through life, but when he logs on to the combat MMO Versus Town, he becomes Tetsuo, a karate champ on his way to becoming the most powerful martial artist around. While his relationship with new classmate Fumiko goes nowhere, Etsuro spends his days and nights online…
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Okei : a girl from the provinces
Set in the midst of samurai warfare in the mountainous region of Aizu in the late 19th century, Okei recounts the coming of age of a young peasant girl, who falls desperately in love with the fierce warrior Sanasuma Kingo, only to learn that the world she inhabits has no place for love.