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‘Yeonnam-dong’s Smiley Laundromat’ by Kim Jiyun (Review)
After an extended stay in Japan, culminating in a rather steamy visit to Nagasaki, we’re moving on for the final leg of our Women in Translation Month journey, heading across the sea to South Korea....
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August 2024 Wrap-Up – Women in Translation Month
As is the case every year, August saw the blog taken over by reviews of women in translation for the ever-popular Women in Translation Month blogging event. As well as enjoying a few sneaky rereads...
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‘Reservoir Bitches’ by Dahlia de la Cerda (Review)
August is over, as is Women in Translation Month, and this year I managed to get nine reviews of new reads posted, as well as enjoying a few rereads in the background. However, just because it’s...
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‘Ghost Mountain’ by Rónán Hession (Review)
A few years back, I was able to persuade my local library to purchase a copy of Irish writer Rónán Hession’s Leonard and Hungry Paul, and having enjoyed that one (a book that has all the makings of a...
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‘The Travelling Cat Chronicles’ by Hiro Arikawa (Review)
Most readers will be aware of the various genres books are divided into (often for marketing purposes…), whether they be Romance, Thrillers, Fantasy or Young Adult, but over the past few years, it...
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‘Kaleidoscope Japan: A Nation through the Lens of Literature’ by Richard...
Those of you with long memories may remember a series of posts on works of Japanese short fiction, the Red-Circle Minis (courtesy of Circle Editions), and after a long hiatus, another book has appeared...
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‘Monkey: New Writing from Japan – Volume 1’ (Review)
Even the most casual reader of J-Lit will have noticed the abundance of cats appearing on covers in recent years, usually a sign that the book in question is a rather light, fluffy read. But what...
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‘The Blanket Cats’ by Kiyoshi Shigematsu (Review)
You may recall that a week or so ago I looked at a certain Japanese book, one that may have been partly responsible for the deluge of works with cats on the cover hitting Anglophone bookshops. Well,...
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‘Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600’, edited...
Earlier this year, I finally got around to catching one of my literary white whales, namely The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (which had been on my shelves for a good decade or so…)....
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‘The Changeling’ by Kenzaburō Ōe (Review)
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been posting on social media about some of the books in my surprisingly extensive J-Lit library, and each time I’ve done so, it’s led either to new purchases (with a...
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September 2024 Wrap-Up
September started off with trips to Mexico and Ireland, but once the first week was over, I’m afraid that it (once again) was all Japan, with the rest of the month’s review books, and a few background...
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‘Gifted’ by Suzumi Suzuki (Review)
As you can see from my monthly wrap-up post, September saw plenty of J-Lit on the blog, and it looks very much as if that trend will continue in October. There are a number of Japanese books I’m...
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‘Days at the Morisaki Bookshop’ by Satoshi Yagisawa (Review)
We kicked October off in Tokyo, with a woman alternating between caring for her terminally-ill mother and painting the town red, but while today’s choice keeps us in the capital, there’s a distinct...
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‘The Proposal’ by Bae Myung-hoon (Review)
After the best part of a month spent reading Japanese literature, today I manage to pull myself away to try something a little different, and ‘different’ definitely fits the bill here. My latest...
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‘More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop’ by Satoshi Yagisawa (Review)
Last week, at the end of our vicarious journey to a certain bookshop, I promised you all a return trip, and today sees me delivering on that promise. We’re heading back to Jimbōchō to spend more time...
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Han Kang – Nobel Laureate in Literature, 2024
This comes a little late (work got in the way…), but as someone with an interest in Korean literature, I couldn’t let the announcement of Han Kang’s Nobel Prize go unmentioned on the blog. This is the...
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‘Monkey: New Writing from Japan – Volume 2’ (Review)
Around a month ago, I posted on my first taste of the wonderful Monkey magazine, the initial 2020 edition, and today sees me moving on to the second instalment, published back in 2021. There’s a...
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‘Eclipse’ by Keiichirō Hirano (Review)
With Anglophone publishers seemingly falling over themselves to bring the fluffier side of Japanese literature into English, it’s always nice when something a little more substantial than cats and...
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‘Marshland’ by Otohiko Kaga (Review)
After last week’s tumultuous trip to fifteenth-century France, we’re heading back to Japan today, with another book that’s not your average slice of J-Lit. Over more than eight-hundred pages, we’ll be...
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‘Tasmania’ by Paolo Giordano (Review)
After a few weeks dominated by J-Lit, it’s time to leave Japan behind and take my vicarious travels elsewhere for a while. Today’s destination is Italy (with a few trips to Paris), but if you judge by...
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