Japanese fiction in translation

Cover image for The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa

The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa (Transl. Polly Barton): Trauma, grief and memory

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I’ve often mentioned the power of novellas on this blog, how in the right hands a few pages can convey much more than several hundred. Mai Ishizawa’s prize-winning debut, The Place of Shells, is a fine example of that for me. Set during the pandemic, it’s narrated by an unnamed academic from Tōhoku, whose coastline […]

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Cover image for A Perfect Day to Be Alone by Nanae Aoyama

A Perfect Day to Be Alone by Nanae Aoyama (transl. Jesse Kirkwood): A poignant, funny coming-of-age story

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Nanae Aoyama’s A Perfect Day to Be Alone is already a bestseller in several European countries, translated into German, French and Italian before Jesse Kirkwood’s English version. Spanning a year in which twenty-year-old Chizu lives with an elderly distant relative, it’s a quiet coming-of-age story. It turned out that when you put three people with

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Idol Burning by Rin Usami

Idol, Burning by Rin Usami (transl Asa Yoneda): ‘My life without him was only an afterlife’  

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I’ve long felt uneasy about the relationship between celebrities and the public, not least the way the media refers to them by their first name as if we know them intimately. It’s particularly painful when the celebrity in question was a child star. Rin Usami’s Idol, Burning examines that relationship through a young girl who

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Cover image for Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada

Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada (transl. David Boyd): A tale of three dinners

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I’d not read any Japanese fiction for quite some time when I spotted Hiroko Oyamada’s eye-catchingly titled Weasels in the Attic on NetGalley and liked the sound of it. Billed as a novel, it reads more like closely linked short stories in which a middle-aged man recounts three separate meals shared with his best friend,

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Cover image for Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa (transl. Alison Watts): More than just a simple confection

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I seem to have been on a bit of a Oneworld roll recently: first They Know Not What They Do – not without its faults but worth reading – then The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao, which looks set fair to be one of my books of 2017, and now Durian Sukegawa’s Sweet Bean Paste.

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