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Recommended books (38)
Travel the world without leaving your chair. The target of the Read Around The World Challenge is to read at least one book written by an author from each and every country in the world. All books that are listed here as part of the "Read Around Asia Challenge" were written by authors from Japan. Find a great book for the next part of your reading journey around the world from this book list. The following popular books have been recommended so far.

11.

Geisha : A Life by Mineko Iwasaki EN

Rating: 3.5     6 Votes
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
A Kyoto geisha describes her initiation into an okiya at the age of four, the intricate training that made up most of her education, her successful career, and the traditions surrounding the geisha culture. Reprint.
Recommended: 09 Apr 2022

12.

How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino EN

Rating: 5     1 Vote
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
The first English translation of the classic Japanese novel that has sold over 2 million copies—a childhood favorite of anime master Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle), with an introduction by Neil Gaiman. First published in 1937, Genzaburō Yoshino’s How Do You Live? has long been acknowledged in Japan as a crossover classic for young readers. Academy Award–winning animator Hayao Miyazaki has called it his favorite childhood book and announced plans to emerge from retirement to make it the basis of his final film. How Do You Live? is narrated in two voices... continue
Recommended: 27 Sep 2022

13.
If Cats Disappeared from the World

If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Genre
Recommended: 16 Mar 2023

14.
Kitchen

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto EN

Rating: 3.5     70 Votes
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
Relates the experiences of two free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan.
Genre
Recommended: 19 Dec 2022

15.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro EN

Rating: 3     4 Votes
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” (The Associated Press). • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! “What stays with you in ‘Klara and the Sun’ is the haunting narrative voice—a genuinely innocent, egoless perspective on the strange behavior of humans obsessed and wounded by power, status and fear.” —Booker Prize... continue
Genre
Recommended: 10 Jun 2022

16.
Le jardin Arc en ciel

Le jardin Arc en ciel by Ogawa Ito FR

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Recommended: 31 Jan 2023

17.

Men Without Women : Stories by Haruki Murakami EN

Rating: 3.8     17 Votes
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Including the story "Drive My Car”—now an Academy Award–nominated film—this collection from the internationally acclaimed author "examines what happens to characters without important women in their lives; it'll move you and confuse you and sometimes leave you with more questions than answers" (Barack Obama). Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are lovesick doctors, students, ex-boyfriends, actors, bartenders, and even Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, brought together to ... continue
Recommended: 04 Sep 2022

18.

My Annihilation by Fuminori Nakamura EN

Rating: 3     2 Votes
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
What transforms a person into a killer? Can it be something as small as a suggestion? Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life. With My Annihilation, Fuminori Nakamura, master of literary noir, has constructed a puzzle box of a narrative in the form of a confessional diary that implicates its reader in a heinous crime. Delving relentlessly into the darkest corners of human consciousness, My Annihilation interrogates the unspeakable thoughts all humans share that can be monstrous when brought to life, revealing with disturbing honesty the psychological motives of a killer.
Recommended: 14 Sep 2022

19.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro EN

Rating: 3.5     539 Votes
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes “a Gothic tour de force" (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist—a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic. As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time... continue

20.
Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami EN

Rating: 5     1 Vote
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.
Recommended: 12 Dec 2022


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