“Mornings With My Cat Mii is beautiful because Inaba is writing about love, the sort of love one could equally have for a human companion.” Nicky Harman
Tag: fiction
Review—Mami Suzuki: Private Eye
A charming novice sleuth who is a middle-aged single mother from Kobe.
Review—Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami
A heartbreaking, yet uplifting, story of two outcasts who find and protect each other through a year of school bullying.
A heartbreaking, yet uplifting, story of two outcasts who find and protect each other through a year of school bullying.
Review—Where the Wild Ladies Are
In Matsuda’s collection, familiar ghosts are treated as commonplace: They are neither surprising nor frightening as they comfortably situate themselves in the modern world
Review—Bullet Train, by Kōtarō Isaka
An action-packed thriller with mature themes exploring the nature of evil, loyalty, mankind’s weaknesses and the morality of killing.
E-Book Deal—The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan
Limited time only Amazon Kindle deal for US$1.99 (Amazon US, Canada) or 150 yen (Amazon Japan) Book Description The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her More…
Review—Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures (Speculative Fiction)
Twenty-four stories in a collection of climate fiction that seek to imagine what cities might look like in a future of multi-species co-existence and green justice.
Review by Leanne Ogasawara Set primarily in the Asia-Pacific, the twenty-four stories of this new collection of climate fiction seek to imagine what cities might look like in a future of multi-species co-existence and green justice. Firmly planted in the new genre of solarpunk, the stories are filled with a polyphony of voices—some non-human and More…
Review—Earthlings: A Novel
Opens as a coming-of-age story, evolves into psychological suspense, and settles into dark fantasy and horror.
Grove Press (October 8, 2020) Review by Tina deBellegarde Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori) is a unique literary experience, one that is impossible to pigeonhole into any specific genre. It opens as a coming-of-age story, evolves into psychological suspense, and settles into dark fantasy and horror. As she did in Convenience Store More…
Review—Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo’s trademark estrangement paradoxically brings his characters closer to us.
A Tale of Two Ishiguros Review by Cody Poulton Once upon a time there were two men who shared the same surname and an interest in robots. One of them, Kazuo, left Japan and became a little Englishman, but he always felt like an outsider, which is a good thing for a writer, which is More…
Susan K Burton Interviews Nick Bradley about ‘The Cat and The City’
Nick Bradley masterfully weaves together seemingly disparate threads to conjure up a vivid tapestry of Tokyo; its glory, its shame, its characters, and a calico cat. -—David Peace
Interview by Susan Karen Burton I first encountered Nick Bradley in the University of East Anglia campus pub in 2015. We were both studying creative writing and a lecturer had suggested we meet because our area of interest—Japan—was, he stated, somewhat specialized. It was felt that we could use each other’s support. He was right. More…