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 ]
Onto March, and with any luck, you'll soon be able to find some of the covers in our monthly round-up on the shelves of your local bookshop before too long. A fine treat it will be too, as there are plenty of lively illustrated children's jackets here, as well as a handful of lovely treatments... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-25 12:50:29 UTC ]
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Poet and countercultural pioneer put on trial for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl went on to become a beloved icon of San FranciscoLawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, publisher, painter and political activist who co-founded the famous City Lights bookshop in San Francisco and became an icon of the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-02-23 19:42:46 UTC ]
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Housmans Bookshop is to release a free playback of two online events featuring actors Christopher Eccleston and Maxine Peake reading stories published by Comma Press. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-23 18:18:14 UTC ]
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Current Events On a visit to an Oklahoma City bookstore, Alex Crayon finds more than books. When I pulled into the snow-covered parking lot of Nappy Roots Books in northeast Oklahoma City, the first thing I noticed were the posters. Handwritten signs... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-02-22 21:59:22 UTC ]
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In the early 1930s, a bookshop window would have displayed the pretty, pictorial dust jackets of the latest bestsellers, say Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. A compact wooden bookshelf stuffed with colorful paperbacks might also have commanded space and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-22 09:49:47 UTC ]
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Nosy Crow m.d Kate Wilson, Nielsen BookScan director for UK and Ireland Hazel Kenyon, and Empowered Author founder Sam Missingham are among the speakers confirmed for the first IPG international publishing forum. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-21 22:46:20 UTC ]
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My sister always goes to the same bookshop in Oxfordshire, where she lives. There she seeks out a young bookseller with a shock of black hair from within the stacks. He once recommended her a list of books, and she loved every single one; she’s been returning to him ever since. During lockdown,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-08 09:49:32 UTC ]
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Nielsen BookScan has estimated the full-year print market for 2020 at 202 million books sold for £1.76bn, a 5.2% rise in volume and a 5.5% increase in value compared to 2019. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-22 10:32:48 UTC ]
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Flipped eye publishing is marking its 20th anniversary this year with a digital bookshop tour, a nationwide hunt for a young editor and a 2021 list including work from Warsan Shire and José Eduardo Agualusa. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-19 07:31:59 UTC ]
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Charlie Mackesy's The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury) was the bestselling book of 2020 through Nielsen BookScan's UK Total Consumer Market. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-12 01:12:31 UTC ]
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Bookshop and Libro.fm, which help independent booksellers sell online, reported huge gains in 2020. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-01-08 05:00:00 UTC ]
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The number of independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland has grown for the fourth consecutive year, the Booksellers Association has confirmed. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-01-08 03:46:57 UTC ]
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Aged 15 I got a Christmas job at my local bookshop in Battersea so I could save to go interrailing. My parents’ bookshelves were brimming with mostly Black writers: Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Chester Himes, Terry McMillan, and I was surrounded by ‘consciousness’... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-12-30 21:25:59 UTC ]
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The Thursday Murder Club sees off titles by Barack Obama and David Walliams in chaotic week for Britain’s book tradeRichard Osman’s cosy mystery about a group of elderly sleuths, The Thursday Murder Club, has become the first debut novel ever to become the Christmas No 1, selling a remarkable... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-12-22 15:00:18 UTC ]
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For the first full week following the lifting of lockdown restrictions in early December, the print market sold 9.17 million books for £84.7m through Nielsen BookScan's Total Consumer Market—15% up in volume and 17% in value against the same week in 2019. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-12-20 21:38:05 UTC ]
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A committee made up of booksellers and non-managerial staff at Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, Calif., has sent a letter to store owner Casey Coonerty Protti asking her to voluntarily recognize their joining with the Communication Workers of America Local 9423. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-12-11 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Barack Obama's A Promised Land (Penguin) has once again charted top of both the Amazon Most-Sold and Most-Read: Non-Fiction charts, as it claimed a third week as the UK Official Top 50 number one through Nielsen BookScan's TCM. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-12-08 21:17:24 UTC ]
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Nigel Jones, formerly of Ottakar's and the Totnes Bookshop, and his wife Claire Jones, a former W H Smith children's buyer, are to open their own independent bookshop in Totnes, two weeks before Christmas. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-30 12:29:44 UTC ]
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Publishers Nosy Crow and Pan Macmillan have been named winners of the FutureBooks Awards: Best of Lockdown, after the week-long virtual conference which culminated in the awards ceremony. The pair won alongside Bath-based bookshop Mr B’s Emporium, the Cheltenham Literature Festival, and academic... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-20 02:37:06 UTC ]
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