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Kokoro
by Natsume Sōseki
Story of an elderly man's search for companionship and solace amid loneliness and heartache.
Part I – “Sensei and I” As the novel opens, the narrator has been left on his own in Kamakura after his friend, who invited him to vacation there, is called home by his family. One day, after ... (Wikipedia)
The Elephant Vanishes
by Haruki Murakami
Collection of short stories depicting the surreal and mysterious aspects of life.
Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679750536 With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled ... (Goodreads)
I Am a Cat
by Natsume Sōseki
A satirical novel narrated by a cat observing the lives of its human owners and their eccentricities.
In I Am a Cat , a supercilious, feline narrator describes the lives of an assortment of middle-class Japanese people : Mr. Sneaze , ("sneeze" is misspelled on purpose, but literally translated from ... (Wikipedia)
For One More Day
by Mitch Albom
A man's journey through time, exploring the bonds of family, life, and death.
The book's theme is mortality: , it analyzes how people might react to the chance to have a dead relative back for a day. , The book tells the story of Charles "Chick" Benetto, a former baseball ... (Wikipedia)
The Devotion of Suspect X
by Keigo Higashino
A genius physicist helps his neighbor cover up a murder, while a relentless detective investigates the crime.
Yasuko lives a quiet life, working in a Tokyo bento shop, a good mother to her only child. But when her ex-husband appears at her door without warning one day, her comfortable world is shattered. ... (Goodreads)
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)
After the Quake
by Haruki Murakami
A collection of short stories exploring humanity in the wake of an earthquake.
The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But ... (Goodreads)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)
Men Without Women
by Ernest Hemingway
Collection of short stories exploring the lives of men and their struggles with love, loss, and loneliness.
CLASSIC SHORT STORIES FROM THE MASTER OF AMERICAN FICTION First published in 1927, Men Without Women represents some of Hemingway's most important and compelling early writing. In these fourteen ... (Goodreads)
Utopia
by Thomas More
A fictional account of a perfect society, exploring the ideal of an ordered and just world.
In his most famous and controversial book, Utopia , Thomas More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is ... (Goodreads)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
Blindness
by José Saramago
A society is plunged into chaos when everyone suddenly loses their sight.
Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortune of a ... (Wikipedia)
Battle Royale
by Koushun Takami
High school students forced to fight to the death in a dystopian society.
Battle Royale takes place in a fictional fascist Japan in the year 1997. The state, known as the Republic of Greater East Asia (,大東亜共和国,, Dai Tōa Kyōwakoku,) , arose after an alternate World War 2 ... (Wikipedia)
Silk
by Alessandro Baricco
Adventure of a 19th century French trader who travels to Japan to find rare silkworm eggs.
The novel tells the story of a French silkworm merchant-turned-smuggler named Hervé Joncour in 19th century France who travels to Japan for his town's supply of silkworms after a disease wipes out ... (Wikipedia)
Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
Exploring the possibilities of a galactic empire in a future driven by science and technology.
For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future – to a dark age ... (Goodreads)
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe
A man finds himself stuck in a remote village, struggling to escape a mysterious sand pit.
In 1955, , Jumpei Niki, , a schoolteacher from Tokyo, visits a fishing village to collect insects. After missing the last bus, he is led by the villagers, in an act of apparent hospitality, to a ... (Wikipedia)
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)
The Setting Sun
by Osamu Dazai
A family of aristocrats in post-WWII Japan struggles to adapt to a changing society and their own decline.
After World War II, a small aristocratic family in Japan has lost all of their money. The family consists of three people: Kazuko, her brother Naoji, and their mother. Naoji is a soldier in the South ... (Wikipedia)
The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly
by Sun-mi Hwang
A hen's quest to break free of her mundane life and fulfill her dream of flying.
A Korean, Charlotte's Web,More than 2 million copies sold, This is the story of a hen named Sprout. No longer content to lay eggs on command, only to have them carted off to the market, she glimpses ... (Goodreads)
Yotsuba&!, Vol. 1
by Kiyohiko Azuma
A heartwarming and humorous manga about a young girl named Yotsuba and her adventures in a new town.
Presents the story of the new kid in town - little Yotsuba, a green-haired and wide-eyed girl who doesn't have a clue... about anything! With no knowledge of the world around her, and an unnatural ... (Goodreads)
The Tale of Genji
by Murasaki Shikibu
A classic Japanese novel about the romantic life of a nobleman and his various loves.
The work recounts the life of, Hikaru Genji, , or "Shining Genji", the son of an ancient Japanese emperor , known to readers as Emperor Kiritsubo, and a low-ranking, but beloved concubine called ... (Wikipedia)
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
by Yukio Mishima
A young Buddhist monk's descent into obsession and tragedy, in a search for beauty and perfection.
The protagonist, Mizoguchi, is the son of a consumptive Buddhist priest who lives and works on the remote Cape Nariu on the north coast of Honshū . As a child, the narrator lives with his uncle at ... (Wikipedia)
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
Tragic story of the decline of a southern family, exploring the human condition.
The first section of the novel is narrated by Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a source of shame to the family due to his diminished mental capacity; the only characters who show genuine care for him are ... (Wikipedia)
War with the Newts
by Karel Čapek
The story of a colony of intelligent newts, who are exploited and ultimately fight for their independence.
Only the last four of the book's 27 chapters deal with the eponymous war. The rest of the book is concerned with the discovery of the Newts, their exploitation and evolution, and growing tensions ... (Wikipedia)
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1
by Diana Wynne Jones
A collection of four magical stories, featuring the enigmatic Chrestomanci, a powerful enchanter tasked with maintaining balance in the multiverse.
There is an alternate cover here . In this multiple parallel universes of the Twelve Related Worlds, only an enchanter with nine lives is powerful enough to control the rampant misuse of magic–and to ... (Goodreads)
Bleach, Vol. 1
by Tite Kubo
A young man discovers he has supernatural powers and must save the world from evil forces.
Part-time student, full-time Soul Reaper, Ichigo is one of the chosen few guardians of the afterlife. Ichigo Kurosaki never asked for the ability to see ghosts—he was born with the gift. When his ... (Barnes & Noble)
Snow Country
by Yasunari Kawabata
A story of forbidden love between a Tokyo sophisticate and a geisha in the secluded depths of a mountain village.
Snow Country is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial geisha that takes place in the remote hot spring (, onsen, ) town of Yuzawa . , (Kawabata did not mention the ... (Wikipedia)
Measure for Measure
by William Shakespeare
A dark comedy about justice, morality, and the search for truth.
Measure for Measure is among the most passionately discussed of Shakespeare’s plays. In it, a duke temporarily removes himself from governing his city-state, deputizing a member of his ... (Goodreads)
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
by Salman Rushdie
A fantastical journey to the depths of the imagination, reclaiming the power of storytelling.
At the beginning of the story, protagonist Haroun Khalifa lives with his father Rashid, a famous storyteller and doctor, and his mother Soraya, until the latter is seduced by their neighbor 'Mr. ... (Wikipedia)
I, Robot
by Isaac Asimov
A collection of science fiction stories exploring the relationship between humans and robots.
Isaac Asimov's I, Robot launches readers on an adventure into a not-so-distant future where man and machine , struggle to redefinelife, love, and consciousness—and where the stakes are nothing less ... (Goodreads)
