Keiichiro Hirano’s first novel to be translated into English was a surprisingly intriguing novel about identity and understanding of one’s place in the world. The plot of A Man centres on a mystery — what was the real identity of the man who lived quietly for years in Town S under the name of Daisuké […]
People From My Neighbourhood was a perplexing reading experience. Hiromi Kawakami delivers a collection of 36 stories featuring the people and places of a Tokyo community as seen through the eyes of an unnamed female narrator. This is no cosy, “normal” neighbourhood however — almost every character we meet or every situation described is strange […]
You don’t have to look very hard in Tokyo to find the kind of shop featured in Convenience Store Woman. They’re as much of the urban landscape as vending machines, billboard advertising and neon lights. An indispensable part of daily life for the millions of workers who commute into the city every day. Sayaka Murata […]
Shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, Mieko Kawakami’s Heaven is compelling and disturbing in equal measures. The issue is cruelty This is a novella that goes deep into the mind of a 14 year-old-boy who is tormented by classmates because he has a lazy eye. The bullies begin with verbal abuse then progress to […]
The Memory Police qualifies as the most unsettling novel I’ve read this year. The last book I’d read by Yogo Ogawa – Revenge – was disturbing and strange but The Memory Police is in another league all together. The novel is set on an unamed island somewhere in the world (there are hints of Asia […]