Items in this hypelist
To Read
El año del pensamiento mágico
Joan Didion · 2024
Invisible Women
Caroline Criado Perez · 2019
#1 International Bestseller “A rallying cry to fight back.” —Sunday Times (London) Winner, 2019 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Winner, 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias in time, money, and sometimes with their lives. Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women, diving into women’s lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor’s office, and more. Chapters here include: Can Snow-Clearing Be Sexist The Myth of Meritocracy The Henry Higgins Effect One-Size-Fits-Men Yentl Syndrome From Purse to Wallet Women’s Rights Are Human Rights Perez writes in her preface, “It’s when women are able to step out from the shadows with their voices and their bodies that things start to shift. The gaps close. And so, at heart, Invisible Women is also a call for change. For too long we have positioned women as a deviation from standard humanity and this is why they have been allowed to become invisible. It’s time for a change in perspective. It’s time for women to be seen.” Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable exposé that will change the way you look at the world.
OCEANO MAR
ALESSANDRO BARICCO · 2007
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · 2024
Esther Greenwood, a bright and ambitious college student from the suburbs, wins a coveted internship at a prominent New York magazine. However, what should be a thrilling experience turns into disillusionment as she becomes increasingly disconnected from her surroundings and her own aspirations. Plath vividly portrays Esther's sense of alienation and her grappling with societal pressures, particularly regarding gender roles, marriage, and career. After returning home, Esther’s mental health deteriorates, leading to a series of failed attempts to reintegrate into daily life. She undergoes various treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy, which are portrayed with harrowing detail. The "bell jar" becomes a metaphor for her suffocating depression, encapsulating her in a stifling world of despair and hopelessness. Despite its dark themes, the novel concludes with a glimmer of hope as Esther begins to emerge from her struggles, though the outcome remains ambiguous. The Bell Jar is a deeply personal and powerful narrative, offering an unflinching look at mental illness and societal expectations, and remains one of the most significant works of modern literature.
Love & Virtue
Diana Reid · 2022
CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS
Rooney Sally · 2018
Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student in Dublin and aspiring writer, she works at a literary agency by day. At night, she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are profiled by Melissa, a well-known journalist, they enter an exotic orbit of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence. Initially unimpressed, Frances finds herself embroiled in a risky menage-a-quatre when she begins an affair with Nick, Melissa's actor husband. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new - a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.
Gender Theory
Madeline Docherty · 2025
Milk Teeth
Jessica Andrews · 2023
From the author of the award-winning Saltwater comes a beautifully told love story set across England, France and Spain.<br/><br/>A girl grows up in the north of England amid scarcity, precarity and the toxic culture of heroin chic, believing that she needs to make herself smaller to claim presence in the world.<br/><br/>Years later, as a young woman with unattainable ideals, she meets someone who calls everything into question, and is forced to confront episodes from her past. Their relationship takes her from London to Barcelona and the precipice of a new life, full of sensuality. Yet she still feels an uneasiness. In the sticky Mediterranean heat, among tropical plants and secluded beaches, she must decide what form her adult life should take and learn how to feel deserving of love and care.
Blue Sisters: A Novel
Coco Mellors · 2024
Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister’s death in this unforgettable story of grief, hope, and the complexities of family, from the acclaimed author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein.<br/><br/>“Sparkling with wit, shot through with longing, Blue Sisters is a beautiful novel, both dazzlingly joyful and achingly sad.”—Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street<br/><br/>The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.<br/><br/>But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.<br/><br/>Imbued with Coco Mellors’s signature combination of humor and heart, Blue Sisters is a story of what it takes to keep living after loss—and, ultimately, to fall in love with life again.
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney · 2021
AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
La chica salvaje
Delia Owens · 2019
Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories
Ryunosuke Akutagawa · 2007
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Yukio Mishima · 1994
A novel from "one of the outstanding writers of the world” (The New York Times) that explores the vicious nature of youth that is sometimes mistaken for innocence. • “A major work of art.” —Time<br/><br/>Thirteen-year-old Noboru is a member of a gang of highly philosophical teenage boys who reject the tenets of the adult world — to them, adult life is illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental. When Noboru’s widowed mother is romanced by Ryuji, a sailor, Noboru is thrilled. He idolizes this rugged man of the sea as a hero. But his admiration soon turns to hatred, as Ryuji forsakes life onboard the ship for marriage, rejecting everything Noboru holds sacred. Upset and appalled, he and his friends respond to this apparent betrayal with a terrible ferocity.
Star
Yukio Mishima · 2019
For the first time in English, a glittering novella about stardom from “one of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century” (Judith Thurman, The New Yorker) Winner of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature All eyes are on Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer, screaming and yelling to attract his attention—they would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells “action”; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions. Being a star, constantly performing, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, is often a drag. But so is life. Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film “Afraid to Die,” this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others?
There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job
Kikuko Tsumura · 2021
<b>"[A] 21st-century response to Herman Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener.'" </b><b>-NPR</b><br><b><br></b><br><b>“A thought-provoking, drily funny critique of capitalism and the systems of self-worth that are built around it.” -<i>TIME</i>, “Must-Read Books of the Year”</b><br><br>A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and ideally, very little thinking.<br><br>Her first gig--watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods--turns out to be inconvenient. (When can she go to the bathroom?) Her next gives way to the supernatural: announcing advertisements for shops that mysteriously disappear. As she moves from job to job--writing trivia for rice cracker packages; punching entry tickets to a purportedly haunted public park--it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful. And when she finally discovers an alternative to the daily grind, it comes with a price.<br><br>This is the first time Kikuko Tsumura--winner of Japan's most prestigious literary award--has been translated into English. <i>There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job</i> is as witty as it is unsettling--a jolting look at the maladies of late capitalist life through the unique and fascinating lens of modern Japanese culture.
Asa: The Girl Who Turned into a Pair of Chopsticks
Natsuko Imamura · 2024
Heaven
Mieko Kawakami · 2021
“A raw, tender portrait of adolescent misery, reminiscent of Elena Ferrante’s fiction.” —NPR From the bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs, a sharp and illuminating novel about the impact of violence and the power of solidarity. Tormented by his peers because of his lazy eye, Kawakami’s protagonist suffers in silence. His only respite comes thanks to his friendship with a girl who is also the victim of relentless teasing. But what is the nature of a friendship if your shared bond is terror? Unflinching yet tender, intimate and multi-layered, Heaven is yet another dazzling testament to Kawakami’s uncontainable talent. “An argument in favor of meaning, of beauty, of life.” —The New York Times Book Review “If you enjoyed Mieko Kawakami’s brilliant Breasts and Eggs, you’re certain to be astonished by her latest novel exploring violence and bullying with fierce, feminist and damning candor.” —Ms. Magazine “This is the real magic of Heaven, which shows us how to think about morality as an ongoing, dramatic activity. It can be maddening and ruinous and isolating. But it can also be shared, enlivened . . . and momentarily redeemed through unheroic acts of solidarity.” —The New Yorker “Quietly devastating.” —TIME Magazine “Keen psychological insight, brilliant sensitivity, and compassionate understanding.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Raw and eloquent. . . . An unexpected classic.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “An incredible literary talent.” —Booklist, starred review “Kawakami writes with jagged, visceral beauty.” —Oprah Daily “Kawakami never lets us settle comfortably, which is a testament to her storytelling power.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “One of Japan’s brightest stars.” —Japan Times
Crying in H Mart
Michelle Zauner · 2022
One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021<br/><br/>The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss.<br/><br/>'As good as everyone says it is and, yes, it will have you in tears. An essential read for anybody who has lost a loved one, as well as those who haven't' – Marie–Claire<br/><br/>In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band – and meeting the man who would become her husband – her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.<br/><br/>It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.<br/><br/>Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.<br/><br/>‘Possibly the best book I’ve read all year . . . I will be buying copies for friends and family this Christmas.’ – Rukmini Iyer in the Guardian ‘Best Food Books of 2021’<br/><br/>‘Wonderful . . . The writing about Korean food is gorgeous . . . but as a brilliant kimchi-related metaphor shows, Zauner’s deepest concern is the ferment, and delicacy, of complicated lives.’ – Victoria Segal, Sunday Times, ‘My favourite read of the year’
Die Sch?nste Version
Thomas, Ruth-maria
Concerning My Daughter
Kim Hye-jin · 2022
The Pachinko Parlour
Elisa Shua Dusapin · 2022
Breasts and Eggs
Mieko Kawakami · 2020
ALL THE LOVERS IN THE NIGHT
Mieko Kawakami · 2023
From literary sensation and International Booker Prize-shortlisted author Mieko Kawakami, the bestelling author of Breasts and Eggs and Heaven comes All the Lovers in the Night, an extraordinary, deeply moving and insightful story set in contemporary Tokyo.<br/><br/>Fuyuko Irie is a freelance proofreader in her thirties. Living alone in an overwhelming city and unable to form meaningful relationships, she has little contact with anyone other than her colleague, Hijiri. But a chance encounter with a man named Mitsutsuka awakens something new in her. Through their weekly meetings, Fuyuko starts to see the world in a different light and still, painful memories from her past begin to resurface. As Fuyuko realizes she exists in a small world of her own making she begins to push at her own boundaries. But will she find the strength to bring down the walls that surround her?<br/><br/>Pulsing and poetic, modern and shocking, this is an unforgettable novel from Japan’s most exciting writer.
Kitchen
Banana Yoshimoto · 2006
Relates the experiences of two free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan.
Noches blancas
Fiodor Dostoievski · 2007
Madrid. 19 cm. 90 p. Encuadernación en tapa blanda de editorial. Colección 'Relatos breves', numero coleccion(10). Dostoevskiï, Fiodor Mijaïlovich 1821-1881. Traducción, Rafael Cansinos Assens. Traducción de: Belye nochi. Cansinos Asséns, Rafael. 1883-1964. Relatos breves (Madrid). 10 .. Este libro es de segunda mano y tiene o puede tener marcas y señales de su anterior propietario. ISBN: 978-84-9815-694-2
Crónica de una muerte anunciada
Gabriel García Márquez · 2014
¡Disponible por primera vez en eBook! Un hombre regresa al pueblo donde ocurrió un asesinato desconcertante 27 años atrás, con la determinación de descubrir la verdad. Todos parecen estar de acuerdo en que Bayardo San Román, sólo unas horas después de su matrimonio con la bella Angela Vicario, la devuelve por deshonrada a la casa paterna. La atribulada familia fuerza a la novia a revelar el nombre de su primer amante; y los hermanos gemelos de ella anuncian su intención de matar a Santiago Nasar por haber deshonrado a su hermana. Sin embargo, si todos sabían que se iba a cometer un asesinato, ¿por qué nadie trató de impedirlo? Cuanto más se sabe de este asunto, menos se comprende, y cuando la historia al fin se precipita a su inesperada conclusión, una sociedad entera —no sólo un par de asesinos— está siendo enjuiciada.
Mister Vertigo
Paul Auster · 1999
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Truman Capote · 1993
Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's. In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape—her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm. This volume also includes three of Capote's best-known stories, “House of Flowers,” “A Diamond Guitar,” and “A Christmas Memory,” which the Saturday Review called “one of the most moving stories in our language.” It is a tale of two innocents—a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend—whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.
El Ultimo Encuentro
Sándor Márai · 1999
Barcelona. 22 cm. 188 p. Encuadernación en tapa blanda de editorial ilustrada. Márai, Sándor 1900-1989. Traducción del húngaro, Judit Xantus. Emecé narrativa. Traducción de: A gyertyak csonkig egnek .. Este libro es de segunda mano y tiene o puede tener marcas y señales de su anterior propietario. ISBN: 84-7888-498-X
Las intermitencias de la muerte
José Saramago · 2006
Barcelona. 22 cm. 258 p. Encuadernación en tapa dura de editorial con sobrecubierta ilustrada. Saramago, José 1922-2010. Traducción de Pilar del Río. Traducción de: As intermitências da morte .. Este libro es de segunda mano y tiene o puede tener marcas y señales de su anterior propietario. ISBN: 84-672-1895-9
Every Last Word
Tamara Ireland Stone · 2015
The New York Times bestselling, BookTok sensation, deeply moving novel of friendship, first love, mental health, and belonging, perfect for fans of Girl in Pieces and The Summer of Broken Rules. If you could read my mind, you wouldn't be smiling. Samantha McAllister looks just like the rest of the popular girls in her junior class. But hidden beneath the straightened hair and expertly applied makeup is a secret that her friends would never understand: Sam has Purely-Obsessional OCD and is consumed by a stream of dark thoughts and worries that she can't turn off. Second-guessing every move, thought, and word makes daily life a struggle, and it doesn't help that her lifelong friends will turn toxic at the first sign of a wrong outfit, wrong lunch, or wrong crush. Yet Sam knows she'd be truly crazy to leave the protection of the most popular girls in school. So when Sam meets Caroline, she has to keep her new friend with a refreshing sense of humor and no style a secret, right up there with Sam's weekly visits to her psychiatrist. Caroline introduces Sam to Poet's Corner, a hidden room and a tight-knit group of misfits who have been ignored by the school at large. Sam is drawn to them immediately, especially a guitar-playing guy with a talent for verse, and starts to discover a whole new side of herself. Slowly, she begins to feel more "normal" than she ever has as part of the popular crowd ... until she finds a new reason to question her sanity and all she holds dear.
This Time It's Real
Ann Liang · 2023
Get ready to fall in love in this hilarious romcom about a girl who begins a fake relationship with the famous actor in her class, perfect for fans of Meg Cabot and Jenny Han, by New York Times bestselling author Ann Liang. When seventeen-year-old Eliza Lin's essay about meeting the love of her life unexpectedly goes viral, her entire life changes overnight. Now she has the approval of her classmates at her new international school in Beijing, a career-launching internship opportunity at her favorite magazine...and a massive secret to keep. Eliza made her essay up. She's never been in a relationship before, let alone in love. All good writing is lying, right? Desperate to hide the truth, Eliza strikes a deal with the famous actor in her class, the charming but aloof Caz Song. She'll help him write his college applications if he poses as her boyfriend. Caz is a dream boyfriend -- he passes handwritten notes to her in class, makes her little sister laugh, and takes her out on motorcycle rides to the best snack stalls around the city. But when her relationship with Caz starts feeling a little too convincing, all of Eliza's carefully laid plans are threatened. Can she still follow her dreams if it means breaking her own heart?
Talking at Night
Claire Daverley · 2024
Will and Rosie meet as teenagers.<br/><br/>They’re opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer—destined to be one another’s great love story.<br/><br/>Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.<br/><br/>But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can’t help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.<br/><br/>What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can’t let go?
Goodnight Tokyo
Atsuhiro Yoshida · 2024
"A must-read for Murakami fans."— Hotlist A symphony of interconnected lives that offers a compelling reflection on life in modern-day metropolises at the intersection of isolation and intimacy in Yoshida's English-language debut Matsui is the driver of a taxi the colour of the night sky. Every night between the hours of 1 am and 4.30 am, Matsui guides his taxi around the streets of Tokyo, collecting passengers and their stories. Seen through the eyes of a cast of colourful characters, Goodnight Tokyo takes the reader on an intimate journey around Tokyo after dark, when Tokyo's eccentrics and insomniacs emerge, and a small grain of madness begins to germinate in the city's night air. Confessions of intimacy and loneliness merge with the surreal: the funeral of an old telephone, the flea-market in which objects are bartered for that don't actually exist. Told over a number of nights – and punctuated by Matsui's dawn arrival at his favourite canteen for a plate of their famous ham and eggs – Yoshida weaves a web of stories that prove to be intimately cand compellingly connected.
The Kamogawa Food Detectives
Hisashi Kashiwai · 2024
The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series, for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.<br/><br/>What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?<br/><br/>Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason customers stop by . . .<br/><br/>The father-daughter duo are 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories – dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.<br/><br/>A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.
The Woman in the Purple Skirt: A Novel
Natsuko Imamura · 2021
The Guest Cat
Takashi Hiraide · 2014
A wonderful sui generis novel about a visiting cat who brings joy into a couple’s life in Tokyo<br/>A bestseller in France and winner of Japan’s Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, The Guest Cat, by the acclaimed poet Takashi Hiraide, is a subtly moving and exceptionally beautiful novel about the transient nature of life and idiosyncratic but deeply felt ways of living. A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copy-editing; they no longer have very much to say to one another. But one day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. It leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. Soon they are buying treats for the cat and enjoying talks about the animal and all its little ways. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife ― the days have more light and color. The novel brims with new small joys and many moments of staggering poetic beauty, but then something happens….<br/>As Kenzaburo Oe has remarked, Takashi Hiraide’s work "really shines." His poetry, which is remarkably cross-hatched with beauty, has been acclaimed here for "its seemingly endless string of shape-shifting objects and experiences,whose splintering effect is enacted via a unique combination of speed and minutiae."
The Nakano Thrift Shop
Hiromi Kawakami · 2017
The Housekeeper and the Professor
Yoko Ogawa · 2009
<p>Yoko Ogawa's <i>The Housekeeper and the Professor</i> is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.<br><br> He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem—ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. <br><br>She is an astute young Housekeeper—with a ten-year-old son—who is hired to care for the Professor. <br>And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities—like the Housekeeper's shoe size—and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.</p>
What You Are Looking for is in the Library
Aoyama Michiko · 2024
Awaiting your visit is a special library where every patron encounters the perfect book… Called one of 2023’s 10 best feel-good books by the Washington Post, this international sensation and “undeniable page-turner” (The New York Times Book Review) is “a celebration of community, connection, and the transformative power of libraries” (Booklist).
Sweet Bean Paste
Durian Sukegawa · 2017
'I'm in story heaven with this book.' Cecelia Ahern, author of P.S. I Love You A charming tale of friendship, love and loneliness in contemporary Japan Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. But everything is about to change. Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape and Tokue’s dark secret is revealed, with devastating consequences. Sweet Bean Paste is a moving novel about the burden of the past and the redemptive power of friendship. Translated into English for the first time, Durian Sukegawa’s beautiful prose is capturing hearts all over the world.
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata · 2019
Meet Keiko.Keiko is 36 years old. She's never had a boyfriend, and she's been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years.Keiko's family wishes she'd get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won't get married.But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she's not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store...*Convenience Store Woman comes in three different colours; the colour you receive will be chosen at random*
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop: A Novel
Satoshi Yagisawa · 2023
The wise and charming international bestseller and hit Japanese movie—about a young woman who loses everything but finds herself—a tale of new beginnings, romantic and family relationships, and the comfort that can be found in books.<br/>Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence—until the day her boyfriend Hideaki, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he’s been cheating on her and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako’s life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression. In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Satoru.<br/>An unusual man who has always pursued something of an unconventional life, especially after his wife Momoko left him out of the blue five years earlier, Satoru runs a second-hand bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo’s famous book district. Takako once looked down upon Satoru’s life. Now, she reluctantly accepts his offer of the tiny room above the bookshop rent-free in exchange for helping out at the store. The move is temporary, until she can get back on her feet. But in the months that follow, Takako surprises herself when she develops a passion for Japanese literature, becomes a regular at a local coffee shop where she makes new friends, and eventually meets a young editor from a nearby publishing house who’s going through his own messy breakup.<br/>But just as she begins to find joy again, Hideaki reappears, forcing Takako to rely once again on her uncle, whose own life has begun to unravel. Together, these seeming opposites work to understand each other and themselves as they continue to share the wisdom they’ve gained in the bookshop.<br/>Translated By Eric Ozawa
Goodbye Tsugumi
Banana Yoshimoto · 2002
Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan · 2021
Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize<br/>"A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers<br/><br/>Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family<br/>It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.<br/>An international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.
A Girl Returned
Donatella Di Pietrantonio · 2019
<p>"One of the best Italian novels of the year" in a pitch-perfect rendering in English by Ann Goldstein, Elena Ferrante's translator ( Huffington Post, Italy). Winner of the Campiello Prize A 2019 Best Book of the Year ( The Washington Post Kirkus Reviews Dallas Morning News) Told with an immediacy and a rare expressive intensity that has earned it countless adoring readers and one of Italy's most prestigious literary prizes, A Girl Returned is a powerful novel rendered with sensitivity and verve by Ann Goldstein, translator of the works of Elena Ferrante. Set against the stark, beautiful landscape of Abruzzo in central Italy, this is a compelling story about mothers and daughters, about responsibility, siblings, and caregiving. Without warning or explanation, an unnamed thirteen-year-old girl is sent away from the family she has always thought of as hers to live with her birth family: a large, chaotic assortment of individuals whom she has never met and who seem anything but welcoming. Thus begins a new life, one of struggle, tension, and conflict, especially between the young girl and her mother. But in her relationship with Adriana and Vincenzo, two of her newly acquired siblings, she will find the strength to start again and to build a new and enduring sense of self. "An achingly beautiful book, and an utterly devastating one." — Minneapolis Star Tribune "Di Pietrantonio [has a] lively way with a phrase (the translator, Ann Goldstein, shows the same sensitivity she does with Elena Ferrante) [and] a fine instinct for detail." —The Washington Post "A gripping, deeply moving coming-of-age novel; immensely readable, beautifully written, and highly recommended." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Captivating." — The Economist<br></p>
I Who Have Never Known Men
Jacqueline Harpman · 2019
<p><b>SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL.</b><br> <br> <b>Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation.</b><br> <br> Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?<br> <br> Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner.<br> <br> Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.<br> <br> <b>WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE <i>WATER CURE</i><br> <br> **<i>Orlanda</i>, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**</b></p>
Open Water
Caleb Azumah Nelson · 2021
WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD<br/>A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35<br/>WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION<br/>A stunning first novel about two young Black artists in London falling in and out of love by a new literary virtuoso and finalist for the BBC Short Story Award, twenty-six-year-old writer and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson<br/>“Open Water is tender poetry, a love song to Black art and thought, an exploration of intimacy and vulnerability between two young artists learning to be soft with each other in a world that hardens against Black people.” —Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing<br/>In a crowded London pub, two young people meet. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—and both are trying to make their mark in a world that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence, and over the course of a year they find their relationship tested by forces beyond their control.<br/>Narrated with deep intimacy, Open Water is at once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity that asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body; to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength; to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, and blistering emotional intelligence, Caleb Azumah Nelson gives a profoundly sensitive portrait of romantic love in all its feverish waves and comforting beauty.<br/>This is one of the most essential debut novels of recent years, heralding the arrival of a stellar and prodigious young talent.
Bluets
Maggie Nelson · 2018
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Toshikazu Kawaguchi · 2020
What Would You Change If You Could Travel Back In Time? Down A Small Alleyway In The Heart Of Tokyo, There’s An Underground Café That’s Been Serving Carefully Brewed Coffee For Over A Hundred Years. Local Legend Says That This Shop Offers Its Customers Something Else Besides Coffee—the Chance To Travel Back In Time. The Rules, However, Are Far From Simple: You Must Sit In One Particular Seat, And You Can’t Venture Outside The Café, Nor Can You Change The Present. And, Most Important, You Only Have The Time It Takes To Drink A Hot Cup Of Coffee—or Risk Getting Stuck Forever. Over The Course Of One Summer, Four Customers Visit The Café In The Hopes Of Traveling To Another Time: A Heartbroken Lover Looking For Closure, A Nurse With A Mysterious Letter From Her Husband, A Waitress Hoping To Say One Last Goodbye And A Mother Whose Child She May Never Get The Chance To Know. Heartwarming, Wistful And Delightfully Quirky, Before The Coffee Gets Cold Explores The Intersecting Lives Of Four Women Who Come Together In One Extraordinary Café, Where The Service May Not Be Quick, But The Opportunities Are Endless.
