The stories of Yasunari Kawabata evoke an unmistakably Japanese atmosphere in their delicacy, understatement, and lyrical description. Like his later works, First Snow on Fuji is concerned with forms of presence and absence, with being, with memory and lo
Banana Yoshimoto’s warm, witty, and heartfelt depictions of the lives of young Japanese have earned her international acclaim and best-seller status. In Hardboiled, the unnamed narrator, hiking in the mountains on the anniversary of her ex-lover's death
Hello Kitty, earthquakes, manga, samurai, robots and sushi. These are some of the things we think about when we think about Japan. This small island nation looms large in the popular imagination, in often contradictory ways: as the epitome of refinement a
The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P is a highly acclaimed work of fiction that won Japans most prestigious literary prize for women writers. A provocative, picaresque spin on a coming-of-age story, the novel tells of a young Japanese woman who wakes up one af
Announcing the first expansion in more than 40 years of the venerable New Penguin Parallel Text series. Here is the perfect introduction to contemporary Japanese fiction. Featuring many stories appearing in English for the first time, this collection, w
