The aftermath of the murder of a bondage teacher reveals the darkest corners of the human mind in this chilling new mystery from the master of Japanese literary noir.Two detectives. Two identical women. One dead body— then two, then three, then four. All knotted up in Japan’s underground BDSM scene and kinbaku, a form of rope bondage which bears a complex cultural history of spirituality, torture, cleansing, and sacrifice.As Togashi, a junior member of the ...

For fans of No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai’s darkly bewitching novel about the small redemptions of being a pathetic, miserable writer.A fictional writer in his thirties named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher an awful manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Wandering along a river in a nearby park in suburban Tokyo, he meets a high-school dropout and the two get into an intellectual spat. Eventually, Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform in ...

For the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel to No Longer HumanThe Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries...

What transforms a person into a killer? Can it be something as small as a suggestion?Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life.With My Annihilation, Fuminori Nakamura, master of literary noir, has constructed a puzzle box of a narrative in the form of a confessional diary that implicates its reader in a heinous crime.Delving relentlessly into the darkest corners of human consciousness, My Annihilation interrogat...

A haunting novella of fame and disillusionment by a Japanese literary iconAll eyes are upon Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer from a roped-off section, screaming and yelling to attract his attention. They would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells "action"; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished...

The mega-bestselling winner of the Japan Booksellers' Award and author of THE CONVENIENCE STORE BY THE SEA: a deeply moving novel about trauma, connection, and the courage to begin again. For fans of Matt Haig and BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLDReaders adore THE WOMAN, THE BOY AND THE WHALE:'I read this in a single sitting and it saved me from the loneliness I had in my heart' *****'A won...

‘Fascinating! A life as art unspooling in real time' WILLIAM BASINSKI, composer of The Disintegration Loops‘A maestro in the truest sense, Ryuichi Sakamoto's very existence has made the world a better place. I'll never stop being grateful for all he has given us’ PAUL RUDD, actor‘Arguably the best-known and most successful Japanese musician in the world’ The New YorkerA genre-defying artist...

Brought to you by Penguin.Your next read for fans of ALL THE LOVERS IN THE NIGHT and MY GLORY - the bestselling winner of the Japan Booksellers' Award: a deeply moving story of vulnerability and finding your voice as a woman fleeing hard times befriends a young boy who cannot speak.HALF A MILLION COPIES SOLDTHE BESTSELLING WINNER OF THE JAPAN BOOKSELLERS' AWARDMADE INTO AN AWARD-NOMINATED FILM

From the bestselling cult author, Osamu Dazai, a familiar theme with an unfamiliar twist: a lover’s suicide pact—but this time the woman livesSachiyo Takano, a charismatic young woman, travels from the countryside to a bustling prewar Tokyo, where she meets an irresistible stranger. They spend the night together, but things go sideways and never quite straightens out. Sachiyo wakes up in a hotel room, having survived a drug overdose, while her lover, whom she learn...

*Winner of the CrimeFest Specsavers Debut Award**Winner of the Crime Fiction Lover Best Translation - Editor's Choice**A Telegraph Thriller of the Year****Shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in Translation*'The epitome of the female-led revenge thriller.' CRIME FICTION LOVER**'Enraging, funny and exciting.' THE TIMES'A fantastically brutal gore fest,...

A deeply moving story about a woman searching for meaning in contemporary Tokyo. From literary sensation and International Booker Prize-shortlisted author Mieko Kawakami, the bestelling author of Breasts and Eggs and Heaven, comes All the Lovers in the Night.'A brief, compelling study of alienation and friendship; I binge-read it in one sitting' – Rebecca F. Kuang, author of YellowfaceFuyuko Irie is a fre...

**The bestselling novel about three women struggling to determine their own lives in contemporary Tokyo.'Breathtaking' – Haruki Murakami, author of Norwegian Wood**A New York Times 'Notable Book of the Year' and one of Elena Ferrante's 'Top 40 Books by Female Authors'.On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko....