From tales of alienation to comforting novels set in bookshops, Japanese authors have written nearly half of this year’s bestselling translated novels in the UK. What’s their secret?• Read an an exclusive Q&A with Haruki MurakamiAnyone who has been in a bookshop in the last few years will have noticed that Japanese fiction is experiencing an extraordinary boom. In 2022, figures from Nielsen BookScan showed that Japanese fiction represented 25% of all translated fiction sales in the UK. The dominance is even more striking this year: figures obtained by the Guardian show that, of the top 40 translated fiction titles for 2024 so far, 43% are Japanese, with Asako Yuzuki’s satirical, socially conscious crime novel Butter topping the list. Butter also won the breakthrough author award at this year’s Books Are My Bag readers awards, which are curated by booksellers and voted for by the public.The popularity of modern Japanese fiction is not a new phenomenon in the UK, of course. In the 1990s, two writers broke through and became cult hits in this country. Haruki Murakami, a worldwide literary phenomenon, took off in Britain when Harvill Press published The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in 1998. Scott Pack, who ran Waterstones’ buying team in the early 2000s, is a big Murakami fan and remembers giving him “lots of attention. Whatever books of his came out, we got massively behind.” This week, Murakami publishes his 15th novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls, about a man who travels... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-11-23 09:00:37 UTC ]
Kant’s Thief I entered the bookshop already terrified and sweaty-palmed, determined to steal Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I would have liked for the whole thing to be over in the blink of an eye. To be able to run as fast as I could to the section where I’d seen the book before, snatch […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-08-08 08:50:35 UTC ]
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For founder and owner Jazzi McGilbert, the concept bookshop and creative space is a physical offering for Black people in L.A. to be themselves. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-06-17 19:58:19 UTC ]
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Today's edition of Daily Deals is sponsored by The Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan Mallery.`The Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan... Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-06-02 15:17:24 UTC ]
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Some days after Barry’s death on December 25, 2020, I pulled every book of his I owned from the shelves around my apartment and stacked them on a corner of my desk. Then I walked down the hill to the used bookshop in the small Oregon town where I live and found several books of […] Continue reading at The Paris Review
[ The Paris Review | 2022-05-31 16:36:03 UTC ]
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May is Mental Health Awareness Day. Recognize it by picking up some of these nonfiction and fiction titles about living with mental illness, including Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-05-03 10:36:00 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Photo by Daniel on Unsplash Readers will naturally and, perhaps, unfortunately, wish to make connections between Sayaka Murata’s (b. 1979) newest novel, Earthlings, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Press, 2021), and her... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-04-19 20:44:40 UTC ]
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L.A. transplant Stanley Rose's short-lived 1930s bookstore and boozy backroom became a literary haven for Chandler, Fante, Faulkner, West and many more. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-04-14 13:00:44 UTC ]
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Shelf Talkers is a new series at Lit Hub where booksellers from independent bookstores around the country share their favorite reads of the moment. Here are recommendations from the staff at The Bookshop, a store in East Nashville, Tennessee, founded in 2016. * Kyle Lucia Wu, Win Me Something... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-04-11 08:51:17 UTC ]
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Barnes & Noble finally has a direct answer to Amazon's purchase of Audible. The bookseller has launched a B&N Audiobooks service in the US that lets you either buy recordings or pay $15 per month for a subscription that offers one recurring monthly credit. You'll have access to more than... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-04-07 16:21:47 UTC ]
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Earlier this week, Club 8-bit, one of Ukraine’s largest privately-owned computer museums, was destroyed during the siege of Mariupol. Kotaku spotted news of the event after its owner, Dmitry Cherepanov, took to Facebook to share the fate of Club 8-bit.It has been reported that the Mariupol... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-03-27 15:41:09 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Photo by Yousef Espanioly on Unsplash Fahredin Shehu writes of Gili Haimovich’s Promised Lands (Finishing Line Press, 2020), “This book communicates globally giving more than a single book of poems may offer. There is her origin and... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-03-09 21:17:53 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Photo by Dominik Scythe / Unsplash A new book by a Nobel laureate and Booker award-winning author always brings with it a sense of trepidation. Will the new novel live up to the already established high expectations? Klara and the... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-03-01 21:50:34 UTC ]
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Essay “Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies,” Roberto Bolaño, who enjoyed accruing enemies in the pantheon of Latin American letters, writes in the short story “Meeting with Enrique Lihn” (New Yorker, December 22, 2008): except for a few... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-28 21:05:10 UTC ]
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News and Events Laura and Bunmi celebrate 41 books by Black authors. From Black joy to history to empowerment, the books on this list provide affirming messages for children and young adults with a special shout-out to NSK Neustadt Prize finalist Jason... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-24 19:13:40 UTC ]
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Anti-racism activist and co-founder of New Beacon Books, Britain’s first specialist black bookshop and publishing companyThe veteran activist Sarah White, who has died aged 80, was for more than half a century a stalwart of initiatives dedicated to anti-colonialism, anti-racism and... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-02-16 19:10:04 UTC ]
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Axel Scheffler has usurped Tony Ross in the list of 2021’s most lucrative illustrators through Nielsen BookScan’s TCM. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2022-01-29 03:07:14 UTC ]
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From reads about lexicographers and bookshop employees to librarians, these books about books, including The Sentence, are for serious bibliophiles only. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-01-21 11:36:00 UTC ]
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More than 100 writers, artists, comedians and musicians will voice James Joyce’s seminal novel in celebration of its publication a century agoOne hundred years ago, in February 1922, Sylvia Beach, owner of the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company, published James Joyce’s Ulysses, in full, for... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-01-20 09:30:55 UTC ]
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Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson's Pinch of Nom: Comfort Food (Bluebird) has notched up a second consecutive week and a fourth week in total atop the UK Official Top 50, selling 54,410 copies through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2022-01-11 22:26:58 UTC ]
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Booming appetites for crime, sci-fi and romance drive fiction sales 20% higher than in 2019, with Richard Osman the year’s bestselling authorBook sales continued to climb last year despite lockdowns, with more than 212m print books sold in 2021 – the highest figure of the last decade.Driven by... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-01-11 17:21:11 UTC ]
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