what i want to read in 2025
Items in this hypelist
Under 200
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
Concerning My Daughter
Kim Hye-jin · 2022
under 300 page
Madona con abrigo de piel / Madona in a Fur Coat (Spanish Edition)
Sabahattin Ali · 2022
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
Maame
Jessica George · 2023
Notes of a Crocodile
Qiu Miaojin · 2017
Winner of the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize Longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize A New York Times Editors' Choice<br/>The English-language premiere of Qiu Miaojin's coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan, a cult classic in China and winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award.<br/><br/>An NYRB Classics Original<br/><br/>Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure.<br/><br/>Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.<br/><br/>Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.
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.
More than 400 page
There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job
Kikuko Tsumura · 2020
Breasts and Eggs
Mieko Kawakami · 2020
A novel that “considers the agency . . . women exert over their bodies and charts the emotional underpinnings of physical changes . . . with humor and empathy” (The New Yorker). On a sweltering summer day, Makiko travels from Osaka to Tokyo, where her sister Natsu lives. She is in the company of her daughter, Midoriko, who has lately grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with adolescence. Over the course of their few days together in the capital, Midoriko’s silence will prove a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and family secrets. On yet another summer’s day eight years later, Natsu, during a journey back to her native city, confronts her anxieties about growing old alone and childless. Bestselling author Mieko Kawakami mixes stylistic inventiveness and riveting emotional depth to tell a story of contemporary womanhood in Japan. “Took my breath away.” —Haruki Murakami, #1 New York Times–bestselling author The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle “Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction with Breast and Eggs.” —The Economist “A sharply observed and heartbreaking portrait of what it means to be a woman.” —TIME “Raw, funny, mundane, heartbreaking.” —The Atlantic “A bracing, feminist exploration of daily life in Japan.” —Entertainment Weekly “Timely feminist themes; strange, surreal prose; and wonderful characters will transcend cultural barriers and enchant readers.” —The New York Observer “Bracing and evocative, tender yet unflinching.” —Publishers Weekly “Kawakami writes with unsettling precision about the body—its discomforts, its appetites, its smells and secretions. And she is especially good at capturing its longings.” —The New York Times Book Review
