The team at Haverhill Library share some of their favourite quirky Asian stories! Browse our staff picks and pick up a copy from your local Suffolk library.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations or explore more of the National Year of Reading campaign.
What You are Looking for is in the Library
Michiko Aoyama
‘What are you looking for?’ asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi.
She is no ordinary librarian. Naturally, she has read every book on her shelf, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of anyone who walks through her door. Sensing exactly what they’re looking for in life, she provides just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.
Every borrower in her library is at a different crossroads, from the restless retail assistant – can she ever get out of a dead-end job? – to the juggling new mother who dreams of becoming a magazine editor, and the meticulous accountant who yearns to own an antique store. The surprise book Komachi lends to each will have transformative consequences.
Miracle on Cherry Hill
Son-mi Hwang
A terminally ill old man returns to his hometown, Cherry Village, to live out the remaining days of his life. Kang Dae-su grapples with his childhood demons and feelings of bitterness about the past but, eventually, his ice-cold heart starts to melt as he reluctantly begins to interact with those around him.
In Hwang’s graceful, gentle prose, Kang’s story unspools as he encounters the inhabitants of Cherry Village and begins to face his childhood demons.
The Phone Box at the Edge of the World
Laura Imai Messina
When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, life must somehow continue.
Then one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone box in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone box spreads, people will travel there from miles around. Soon Yui will make her own pilgrimage to the phone box, too.
But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Then she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss. What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking. For when you’ve lost everything – what can you find?
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata
Keiko has never really fitted in. At school and university people find her odd and her family worries she’ll never be normal. To appease them, Keiko takes a job at a newly opened convenience store.
Here, she finds peace and purpose in the simple, daily tasks and routine interactions. She is, she comes to understand, happiest as a convienience store worker.
But in Keiko’s social circle it just won’t do for an unmarried woman to spend all her time stacking shelves and re-ordering green tea.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Toshikazu Kawaguchi
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
In this novel, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold. Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time?
Kitchen
Banana Yoshimoto
Kitchen comprises Banana Yoshimoto’s two classic tales about mothers, trans identity, bereavement, kitchens, love and tragedy.
First published in 1987, it won two of Japan’s most prestigious literary prizes, remained at the top of the bestseller lists for over a year and has gone on to be a much-loved international bestseller.
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