Prefiguring the vital modernist voices of the Western literary canon, Akutagawa writes with a trenchant psychological precision that exposes the shifting traditions and ironies of early twentieth-century Japan and reveals his own strained connection to it. These stories are moving glimpses into a cast of characters at odds with the society around them, singular portraits that soar effortlessly toward the universal. "What good is intelligence if you cannot discover a useful melancholy?" Aku...

Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial families, a new and powerful elite.Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family – members of the waning aristocracy – but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new, and his feelings for the exquisite, spirited Satoko. His devoted friend Honda watches from the sidelines. It is only wh...

Two terrifying classics by “the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction” (The Washington Post)Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepes...

These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of the past century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touches upon a wide range of subjects that will interest writers, artists,and thinkers. This luminous translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's classic offers brilliant inspiration to all people who seek to know and express their inner truth. Letters to a Young Poet is a classic that should be required readi...

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, by Lafcadio Hearn, features several Japanese ghost stories and a brief study on insects. Hearn declares in his introduction, that most of these stories were translated from old Japanese texts (probably with the help of his wife, Setsu Koizumi). He also states that one of the stories - Yuki-onna - was told to him by a farmer in Musashi Province, and this was, to the best of his knowledge, the first record of it.

A timeless travel-writing classic that inspired the film, with photography by Yoichi Midorikawa.In this acclaimed travel memoir, Donald Richie paints a memorable portrait of the island-studded Inland Sea. His existential ruminations on food, culture, and love and his brilliant descriptions of life and landscape are a window into an Old Japan that has now nearly vanished.The book that cemented Donald Richie's reputation as a master of observation. With lucid...

"These three stories illustrate Inoue's versatility, his mastery of detail and his control of narrative structure. Inoue presents the tale as mystery and solution, the tale as psychoanalytic exploration…, the tale as emblematic social history."-Arizona QuarterlyIn The Counterfeiter, a writer is commissioned to write the biography of a famous painter but becomes fascinated by a man who produced forgeries of the artist's work. Obasute

Century-old letters tell a story of timeless love in a vanished countryFirst translated by American scholar Elizabeth Cooper in 1914 and published as My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard, this haunting collection of letters was out of print until discovered by bestselling author Eileen Goudge. In its pages she found the story of Kwei-li, a noblewoman of nineteenth-century China.In rich, elegant detail, Kwei-li writes of passionate love for a man whom s...

Finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction"The excellent strength [the novellas] share is a gracefulness and dreamlike sonority, reminiscent of writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and W.G. Sebald, wherein strange evolutions of solitary lives are the rule, and readers are held by the stately, hypnotic dignity of the voice that tells them." – San Francisco ChronicleSet in modern India, these three novellas move beyond the cities to places still haunted by the past, and to ...

The Pulitzer and Nobel Prize–winning and New York Times –bestselling author's memoir of making a movie in 1960s Japan while mourning the loss of her husband.Pearl S. Buck's children's story, The Big Wave, about two young friends whose lives are transformed when a volcano erupts and a tidal wave engulfs their village, was eventually optioned as a movie. A Bridge for Passing narrates the resulting adventur...

The Tale of Murasaki is an elegant and brilliantly authentic historical novel by the author of Geisha and the only Westerner ever to have become a geisha.In the eleventh century Murasaki Shikibu wrote the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, the most popular work in the history of Japanese literature. In The Tale of Murasaki*,* Liza Dalby has created a breathtaking fictionalized narrative of the life of this tim...