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"The much-anticipated new novel from the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Killing Commendatore is an epic tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art--as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby--and a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers"--
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Having quit his job, Toru Okada is enjoying a pleasant stint as a "house husband", listening to music and arranging the dry cleaning and doing the cooking - until his cat goes missing, his wife becomes distant and begins acting strangely, and he starts meeting enigmatic people with fantastic life stories. They involve him in a world of psychics, shared dreams, out-of-body experiences, and shaman-like powers, and tell him stories from Japan's war in...
5) The hole
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"Asa's husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family's home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips...
6) The gun
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"On a nighttime walk along a Tokyo riverbank, a young man named Nishikawa stumbles on a dead body, besides which is lying a gun. From the moment Nishikawa makes the decision to take the gun, the world around him blurs. Knowing he possesses the gun brings an intoxicating sense of purpose to his dull university life. But Nishikawa's personal entanglements are becoming unexpectedly complicated: he finds himself romantically involved with two women, while...
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"The soul of the deceased narrator, cleansed of all its memories of its past life, is heading toward the darkness when it suddenly encounters an angel. 'Congratulations!' the angel exclaims. 'You're the winner of our lottery! You're being given a second chance!' The next thing it knows, the soul is back on earth, occupying the body of fifteen-year-old Makoto who is planning to poison himself. Makoto is friendless, and his family shows him little love....
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From the author of The Aosawa Murders, one of the NYT Notable Books of 2020. The WSJ commented: "Part psychological thriller, part murder mystery—it is audacious in conception and brilliant in execution." The Globe and Mail said the book was "emerging as one of the most praised novels of the year."
This gripping psychological thriller takes place in a desolate apartment in a Japanese city. The protagonists, Aki and Hiro, fell in love at
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"Winner of the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary award. An unnamed Tokyo taxi driver has experienced a rupture from his everyday life. As he picks up fares that take him through Tokyo's night streets, offering him glimpses into the lives of his passengers, he can't escape his own nihilistic thoughts. Almost without meaning to, he puts himself in harm's way; he can't stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the...
10) No longer human
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Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual...
11) Diary of a void
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"When thirty-four-year-old Ms. Shibata gets a new job in Tokyo to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that, as the only woman at her new workplace-a company that manufactures cardboard tubes-she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day she announces that she can't clear away her colleagues' dirty cups-because she's pregnant and the smell nauseates her. The only thing is . . . Ms. Shibata is not pregnant. Pregnant Ms. Shibata...
12) The factory
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The English-language debut of one of Japan's most exciting new writers, The Factory follows three workers at a sprawling industrial factory. Each worker focuses intently on the specific task they've been assigned: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. But their lives slowly become governed by their work--days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins...
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"With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata, whose Convenience Store Woman has now sold more than a million copies worldwide, returns with a brilliant and wonderfully unsettling collection, her most recent fiction to be published in Japan. In these twelve stories, Murata mixes an unusual cocktail of humor and horror and turns the norms and traditions of society on their head to better question them. In "A First-Rate Material," Nana and Naoki...
14) Seventeen
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Seventeen years after an air disaster of unprecedented scale occured near his newspaper office, reporter Kazumasa Yuuki makes good on a promise he made during that supercharged week and solves a mystery.
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"The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story. Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, whom she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation's imagination, but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is until journalist...
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