First things first: Don't let the book cover lead you too far astray. What you see here is actually the movie poster for legendary Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s latest international endeavor. While the film, The Flowers of War, is based on Geling Yan’s novel, originally titled...
March 11, 2011, 14:46 Japan Standard Time: A magnitude-9.0 earthquake lasts six minutes, followed by a 50-foot tsunami that, within 15 minutes, plows inland six miles and causes meltdowns in five nuclear plants. “In one’s wildest imagination, this is beyond conceivable,” write editors Elmer Luke...
Kanna, Otcho, and Manjome are all in the same room – you could say even on the same side. The final words from Manjome leave everyone speechless: "Please ...
The three-part manga adaptation of Dazai Osamu's classic semi-autobiographical novel of human disconnect concludes here with utter fear and loathing. To catch up to this point, click here for the first two volumes. Yozo Oba, now 22, is living so blissfully with his lovely young wife Yoshino...
Handpicked by Nobel Laureate Kenzaburō Ōe for his eponymous Ōe Prize in 2009, Nakamura – who has also previously garnered many of Japan’s other top awards (Noma Literary New Face Prize, the coveted Akutagawa Prize) – makes his Stateside debut-in-translation. Disguised as fast-paced, shock-fueled crime fiction,...
I think I will forever remember this book, perhaps not so much for the story, but for a single word: a blind young man sitting in the dark with hands running across the pages answers when asked what he's doing ...
Doh! For some reason, I had no idea the other-worldly adventures of the Picasso/Chiaki dynamic duo [pocket-angel Chiaki directs the surviving Picasso towards doing good deeds for his fellow students] was a trilogy. I figured on a few more years of diving into secret sketches since...
More and more, I've noticed book cover flaps yielding important tidbits (which makes me a bit concerned about such covers going astray, especially for picture books handled by so many little hands!). But worry aside, how fitting to find this on the front flap about...
The ongoing gender-bender adventures of Nitori Shuichi – a boy who wants to be a girl – and his best friend Takatsuki Yoshino – a girl who wants to be a boy – open with the beginning of the 6th-grade school year. What commenced as mostly cross-dressing fun in volume...
Chapter 1: an ultra high-tech building with an especially remarkable elevator (although without the usual, mundane details like floor buttons), loose change that suddenly doesn't add up, a beautiful (chubby) young woman in everything pink who might have said "Proust" (or maybe "Truest? ...
What does it take to update a 60+-year-old story? In the case of Usamaru Furuya's 21st-century manga adaptation of the literary classic Ningen Shikkaku, a semi-autobiographical novel by Dazai Osamu (published in 1948 in Japan, translated into English as No Longer Human in 1958), an...
In early 1940s wartime Berlin, an official letter arrives for Otto and Anna Quangel with the unbearable news that their only son is dead. Anna immediately rejects "'those common lies ...
Yu Hua is a grand master of subversion. Just as his title – China In Ten Words – promises, Yu “compress[es] the endless chatter of China today into ten simple words ...
Haruki Murakami’s lesser-known-in-the-West "Trilogy of the Rat" continues with the second prequel to his breakout international bestseller, A Wild Sheep Chase. Both Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, were nominated for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, considered by many to be Japan's top literary honor, and...
In spite of my decades-long obsession with Haruki Murakami, some part of my literary brain was clearly disconnected because not until I read his popular running memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, did I learn about his “Trilogy of the Rat,” which includes two...
Much to my children's dismay (and longing), we don't have a dog (allergies). I am, however, so lucky to have a regular canine companion, Z, whose mother brings her on our twice-a-week hikes through the woods. As I was sniffling and snuffling through this heartfelt...
The simple things in life always deserve our greatest gratitude: Today, this day of turkeys and thanks, those of us with our families close by are quite possibly the luckiest people on earth. Take the small family of three in this gorgeous yet bittersweet story …...
Life just seems better with a Haruki Murakami story stuck in my ears ...
