Japanese Literature

Tales From the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi Series: Before the Coffee Gets Cold #2 Genres: Adult, Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Japanese Literature, Magical Realism Published by Hanover Square Press Format: eBook Pages: 145 The highly anticipated sequel to the international bestseller Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this book follows four new customers who hope to travel back in time in a little Japanese café.  In a back alley in Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.  With faces both familiar and new, Tales from the Cafe follows the story of four customers who hope to take advantage of café Funiculi Funicula’s time-travelling offer and revisit moments with family, friends and lovers. Each of them must face up to their past to move on with their life.  Kawaguchi’s wistful and heartwarming new novel once again invites the reader to ask themselves, What would you change if you could travel back in time? Book #2 in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, I picked this up with the hope that it would be a …

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami Genres: Adult, Asian Literature, Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Japanese Literature, Magical Realism Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group on December 31, 1996 Format: Paperback Pages: 607 Japan’s most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria. Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon. This book may be unsuitable for people under 17 years of age due …

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami Genres: Adult, Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Japanese Literature, Magical Realism, Science Fiction Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group on August 28, 2009 Format: Hardcover Pages: 944 A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector. A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s …

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi Series: Before the Coffee Gets Cold #1 Genres: Adult, Contemporary Fiction, Japanese Literature, Magical Realism, Time Travel Published by Hanover Square Press on November 17, 2020 Format: Hardcover Pages: 272 If you could go back, who would you want to meet? In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time. Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold. Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time? Note: My original review for this book is old and does not meet current review standards. A fully rewritten review is planned.