Ring by Koji Suzuki, translated by Robert B. Rohmer and Glynne Walley [in AsianWeek]
Here's the book that inspired both the Japanese cult film, Ringu, and the recent American remake, The Ring. With its bright pink and white cover, it’s a major eye-catcher. Start reading and it’s so creepy, your...
A middle-aged yakuza who probably should have been “The Boss” but has stalled somewhere tries to figure out how to get out of the fray and quietly manipulate his way to the top.
Review:
First trade paperback edition of the harrowing memoir of a 6-year-old child who becomes separated from her family in the last days of World War II in Okinawa,...
Unique collection of classical Chinese poetry that reveals the Chinese influences on American poetry, with translations by poets themselves, including such near-mythic figures as William Carlos Williams and...
Newly released paperback edition of critically acclaimed autobiographical novel which details the life of a young boy in 1930s Japan through World War II, whose father is a secret anti-war activist and...
Oda, known for his outspoken anti-war sentiments, captures a group of loyal, patriotic Japanese soldiers on a South Pacific island during the final days of World War II, who are mere pawns of a...
Another quirky tale – a love story of sorts – from Japan’s favorite Gen-Xer, this time about two extremely different cousins who spend a summer together by the seashore.
Review:
An almost comic tale about an immature, overprivileged, married professor who falls in love with a much younger woman on her wedding day, set on the eve of the horrific Rape of Nanjing when...
An undeniably superb, even breathtaking short story collection about life spent in the “in-between” by the Japanese-born, German-domiciled, multi-dimensioned Tawada.
Review:
Brand new edition of the classic collection of almost 300-year-old tidbits on how to live the life of the proper samurai. Historically, its followers have been many and notable, including the legendary writer Yukio Mishima and...
While Mishima’s fiction (not to mention his flamboyant life) is internationally renowned, his dramas are virtually unknown in the West, although he published more than 60 plays. This collection includes five of...
A collection of haunting, surreal, signature-Murakami stories that have at their core a tenuous, frightening connection to the devastating 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan.
Review:
First published more than 35 years ago, Pillow follows the story of Shokichi Hamada, who escapes military service during World War II by fleeing to the countryside – and by...
The follow-up to Gao’s Nobel Prize-winning Soul Mountain. At the request of his naked, white German lover in the relative freedom of a Hong Kong hotel room in 1996, Gao’s fictionalized counterpart...
A semi-autobiographical novel about a famous writer obsessed with literature, William Blake, and dealing with parenting a mentally disabled child.
Review:
A sweeping saga of Tibet before the Chinese occupation, told through the privileged view of the self-proclaimed “renowned idiot son” of a Tibetan chieftain.
Review:
Love story gone wrong about an over-idealistic woman who becomes disillusioned with her weak husband's reality and becomes the mistress of a has-been, philandering conductor desperate to get back in the spotlight.
Review: <a href="http://bookdragonreviews.wordpress.com/files/2009/08/amagazine-2002-0203-new-and-notable.pdf"...
First-ever memoir available in English about the horrors of surviving and escaping the brutal Communist labor camps of closed, barren North Korea.
Review:
Letters from Ogura to his young wife, who survived the actual bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, only to die of radiation sickness...
Early 20th-century Japanese feminist poet's memorable road trip east. You go, girl!
Review: