Read the Best Fiction from Japan United States Rest of the World
Discover the best fiction books from Japan, the United States, and around the world. Explore captivating reads and top-rated novels in our curated list for global literature lovers.
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Darkness in Summer
by Takeshi Kaiko
"This intensely modern novel … provides vivid insights into the alienated condition of a certain type of Japanese whom we may so often glimpse in …
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Spring Snow
by Yukio Mishima
"A classic of Japanese literature" (Chicago Sun-Times) and the first novel in the masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, set in 1912 Tokyo, featuring an …
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A Quiet Life
by Kenzaburō Ōe
A Japanese novelist and his wife move to America, leaving the children behind. It befalls to the eldest daughter to look after a younger sister …
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War and Peace
by graf Leo Tolstoy
Presents the classical epic of the Napoleonic Wars and their effects on four Russian families
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Penguin Classics Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
'One of the greatest love stories in world literature' Vladimir Nabokov The heroine of Tolstoy's epic of love and self-destruction, Anna Karenina has beauty, wealth, …
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Kokoro
by Bishop of Hippo Soseki
Haunted by tragic secrets, Sensei slowly opens up to his young disciple, confessing indiscretions from his own student days that have left him reeling with …
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Kusamakura
by Natsume Soseki
A stunning new English translation—the first in more than forty years—of a major novel by the father of modern Japanese fiction Natsume Soseki's Kusamakura—meaning “grass …
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The Tale of Genji
by Murasaki Shikibu
The Tale of Genji was written in the eleventh century by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady of the Heian court. It is universally recognized as the …
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The Pillow Book of Sei Sh?nagon
by Sei Shōnagon
One of the great classics of Japanese literature, "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon" is by far our most detailed source of factual material on …
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Kitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto
Relates the experiences of two free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan.
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Notes from Underground; the Double
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
‘It is best to do nothing! The best thing is conscious inertia! So long live the underground!’Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of …
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The Woman in the Dunes
by Kobo Abe
The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel. After missing the …
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A Book of Five Rings
by Musashi Miyamoto
Translated by V. Harris. Japan's answer to the Harvard MBA...Written over three centuries ago by a Samurai warrior, the book has been hailed as a …
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Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of H. P. Lovecraft
by H. P. Lovecraft
“H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”—Stephen King “The oldest and strongest emotion of …
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The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto
by Kenji Nakagami
Portrayal of a community scarred by poverty & racism.
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Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories
by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
A stunning deluxe edition of one of Penguin Classics' most popular translations Ryünosuke Akutagawa is one of Japan's foremost stylists—a modernist master whose short stories …
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Beauty and Sadness
by Yasunari Kawabata
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a …
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Geisha in Rivalry
by Kafu Nagai
Geisha in Rivalry, first published as Udekurabe in 1918, has a secure place among Kafu Nagai's masterpieces. Set against the backdrop of Tokyo's Shimbashi geisha …
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Vita Sexualis
by 森鴎外
An important record of Japans moral struggles during the cultural upheaval of the Meiji era.
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The Makioka Sisters
by Junichiro Tanizaki
Four daughters of an old merchant family unknowingly face the end of a gentler way of life in Osaka, Japan in 1938.
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Fires on the Plain
by Shohei Ooka
Anti-war novel as seen from the point of view of a losing army.
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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A mysterious American millionaire tries to recapture the sweetheart of his youth, which results in tragedy.
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Nineteen Eighty-four
by George Orwell
Eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity in this satire of totalitarian barbarism.
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The Gossamer Years
Kagero Nikki, translated here as The Gossamer Years, belongs to the same period as the celebrated Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikuibu. This remarkably frank …
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Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse
The classic novel of a quest for knowledge that has delighted, inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, and thinkers—a perennial favorite for graduation gifts. …
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Essays in Idleness
by 吉田兼好
The Buddhist priest Kenko clung to tradition, Buddhism, and the pleasures of solitude, and the themes he treats in his "Essays, " written sometime between …