Rebeccah from Lowestoft Library shares some of her favourite amazing Asian fiction in translation! Browse our staff picks and pick up a copy from your local library.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations or explore more of the National Year of Reading campaign.
The Memory Police
Yoko Ogawa
Hat, ribbon, bird, rose.
To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.
When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn’t forget, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?
‘The Memory Police’ is a beautiful, haunting and provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss from one of Japan’s greatest writers. For readers of The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451 and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Strange Weather in Tokyo
Hiromi Kawakami
Tsukiko is in her late thirties and living alone when one night she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, Sensei, in a bar. He is at least thirty years her senior, retired and, she presumes, a widower.
After this initial encounter, the pair continue to meet occasionally to share food and drink sake, and as the seasons pass – from spring cherry blossom to autumnal mushrooms – Tsukiko and Sensei come to develop a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love.
The Eyes are the Best Part
Monika Kim
Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure.
Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying – yet enticing. In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of blue eyes. Salivatingly perfect male eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend.
George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that. Ji-won’s hunger and rage need to be sated.
Vanishing World
Sayaka Murata
In our near-future world, children are solely conceived by artificial insemination. Even sex between married couples is viewed as taboo.
Amane’s family is irregular. Her parents copulated to create her and hope that she too will find love and have a child with the person she marries. But Amane falls in line with society’s way of thinking and wants a regular ‘clean’ marriage.
Then she hears of a place that is the subject of a social experiment. Everyone in Paradise-Eden will act as one big family. Could this be the perfect third way?
Strange Pictures
Uketsu
A series of drawings made by a young woman before her death.
A child’s disturbing picture of his home.
A desperate sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments.
Each contains a chilling warning. Each reveals a terrible secret, hidden in plain sight.
Uketsu’s eerie mysteries have captivated millions of readers. Can you find the clues in these strange pictures and uncover the sinister truth that connects them all?
Life Ceremony: Stories
Sayaka Murata
From the author of international bestseller Convenience Store Woman comes a collection of short fiction: weird, out of this world and like nothing you’ve read before.
An engaged couple falls out over the husband’s dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials; a young girl finds herself deeply enamoured with the curtain in her childhood bedroom; people honour their dead by eating them and then procreating.
Published in English for the first time, this exclusive edition also includes the story that first brought Sayaka Murata international acclaim: ‘A Clean Marriage’, which tells the story of a happily asexual couple who must submit to some radical medical procedures if they are to conceive a longed-for child.
Mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, old ladies who love each other and young women finding empathy and transformation in unlikely places, Life Ceremony is a wild ride to the outer edges of one of the most original minds in contemporary fiction.
The Woman in the Purple Skirt
Natsuko Imamura
The Woman in the Purple Skirt seems to live in a world of her own. She appears to glide through crowded streets without acknowledging any reaction her presence elicits.
Each afternoon, she sits on the same park bench, eating a pastry and ignoring the local children who make a game of trying to get her attention.
She may not know it, but the Woman in the Purple Skirt being watched.
Someone is following her, always perched just out of sight, monitoring which buses she takes; what she eats; whom she speaks to.
But this invisible observer isn’t a stalker – no, it’s much more complicated than that.
Earthlings
Sayaka Murata
Natsuki isn’t like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet.
Together with her cousin, Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds.
When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what.
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