From the author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this funny, heartwarming story about love, life, and human relationships that features a delightfully offbeat cast of characters. Objects for sale at the Nakano Thrift Shop appear as commonplace as the staff and customers that handle them. But like those same customers and staff, they hold many secrets. If examined carefully, they show the signs of innumerable extravagancies, of immeasurable pleasure and pain, and of the deep mysteries of the human heart. Hitomi, the inexperienced young woman who works the register at Mr. Nakano's thrift shop, has fallen for her coworker, the oddly reserved Takeo. Unsure of how to attract his attention, she seeks advice from her employer's sister, Masayo, whose sentimental entanglements make her a somewhat unconventional guide. But thanks in part to Masayo, Hitomi will come to realize that love, desire, and intimacy require acceptance not only of idiosyncrasies but also of the delicate waltz between open and hidden secrets.  Animating each delicately rendered chapter in Kawakami's playful novel is Mr. Nakano himself, an original, entertaining, and enigmatic creation whose compulsive mannerisms, secretive love life, and impulsive behavior defy all expectations.

The Nakano Thrift Shop (Thorndike Press Large Print Peer Picks)

Literature & Fiction

KAWAKAMI, Hiromi

Humor & Satire

Thorndike Press Large Print

Tsukiko, thirty-eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, Sensei” in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him Sensei” (Teacher”). He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationshiptraced by Kawakami’s gentle hints at the changing seasonsdevelops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to an enjoyable sense of companionship, and finally into a deeply sentimental love affair.As Tsukiko and Sensei grow to know and love one another, time’s passing comes across through the seasons and the food and beverages they consume together. From warm sake to chilled beer, from the buds on the trees to the blooming of the cherry blossoms, the reader is enveloped by a keen sense of pathos and both characters’ keen loneliness.

The Briefcase

Literary

Counterpoint

Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three-year-old daughter. Her new relationship with a married manthe antithesis of Reihas brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into routine, day after day. Kei begins making repeated trips to the seaside town of Manazuru, a place that jogs her memory to a moment in time she can never quite locate. Her time there by the water encompasses years of unsteady footing and a developing urgency to find something. Through a poetic style embracing the surreal and grotesque, a quiet tenderness emerges from these dark moments. Manazuru is a meditation on memorya profound, precisely delineated exploration of the relationships between lovers and family members. Both startlingly restless and immaculately compact, Manazuru paints the portrait of a woman on the brink of her own memories and future.

Manazuru

Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three-year-old daughter. Her new relationship with a married manthe antithesis of Reihas brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into routine, day after day. Kei begins making repeated trips to the seaside town of Manazuru, a place that jogs her memory to a moment in time she can never quite locate. Her time there by the water encompasses years of unsteady footing and a developing urgency to find something.Through a poetic style embracing the surreal and grotesque, a quiet tenderness emerges from these dark moments. Manazuru is a meditation on memorya profound, precisely delineated exploration of the relationships between lovers and family members. Both startlingly restless and immaculately compact, Manazuru paints the portrait of a woman on the brink of her own memories and future.

On a summer afternoon, Tsukiko and her former high school teacher have prepared and eaten somen noodles together. “Tell me a story from long ago,” Sensei says. “I wasn’t alive long ago,” Tsukiko says, “but should I tell you a story from when I was little?” “Please do,” Sensei replies, and so Tsukiko tells him that, when she was a child, she awakened one day to find something with a pale red face and something with a dark red face in her room, arguing with each other. They had human bodies, long noses, and wings. They were tengu, creatures that appear in Japanese folktales. The tengu attach themselves to Tsukiko and begin to follow her everywhere. Where did they come from and why are they here? And what other invisible and unacknowledged forces are acting upon Tsukiko’s seemingly peaceful world?

Parade: A Folktale

Soft Skull

From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions an Earth where humans are nearing extinction, and rewrites our understanding of reproduction, ecology, evolution, artificial intelligence, communal life, creation, love, and the future of humanity In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of "Mothers." Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings--but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world. Unfolding over fourteen interconnected episodes spanning geological eons, at once technical and pastoral, mournful and utopic, Not to Be Carried Away by the Big Bird presents an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird: A Novel

Genre Fiction

From the author of the internationally bestselling Strange Weather in Tokyo, a collection of interlinking stories that masterfully blend the mundane and the mythical--"fairy tales in the best Brothers Grimm tradition: naïf, magical, and frequently veering into the macabre" (Financial Times). A bossy child who lives under a white cloth near a tree; a schoolgirl who keeps doll's brains in a desk drawer; an old man with two shadows, one docile and one rebellious; a diplomat no one has ever seen who goes fishing at an artificial lake no one has ever heard of. These are some of the inhabitants of People from My Neighborhood. In their lives, details of the local and everyday--the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office--slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In twenty-six "palm of the hand" stories--fictions small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand and brief enough to allow for dipping in and out--Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation.

People from My Neighborhood: Stories

This “gentle, humorous novel” follows a young Japanese woman as she yearns for the love of a reluctant coworker (The Wall Street Journal). The objects for sale at the Nakano Thrift Shop appear as commonplace as the staff and customers who handle them. But like those staff and customers, they hold many secrets. If examined carefully, they show the signs of innumerable extravagances, of immeasurable pleasure and pain, and of the deep mysteries of the human heart.Hitomi, the inexperienced young woman who works the register, has fallen for her coworker, the oddly reserved Takeo. Unsure of how to attract his attention, she seeks advice from her employer’s sister, Masayo, whose sentimental entanglements make her a somewhat unconventional guide. But thanks in part to Masayo, Hitomi will come to realize that love, desire, and intimacy require acceptance not only of idiosyncrasies but also of the delicate waltz between open and hidden secrets, in this novel from the author of Strange Weather in Tokyo that “captures an untranslatable Japanese mood” (The New York Times). “Uses a series of vignettes to chronicle a girl’s time working at Mr. Nakano’s secondhand store in Tokyo . . . Pleasant, leisurely prose.”―Publishers Weekly “Hiromi Kawakami’s charming novel illuminates moments of kindness, love and friendship that pop up like the unexpected treasures amid the shop’s dusty collection of pretty mismatched bowls and plates, castoff eyeglasses, task lamps and old electric fans.”―Minneapolis Star-Tribune

The Nakano Thrift Shop: A Novel

Europa Editions

WINNER 2020 PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE Best-selling and beloved Japanese author Hiromi Kawakami (The Nakano Thrift Shop) tells the story of an enigmatic man through the voices of ten remarkable women who have loved him. “If you like Haruki Murakami and Yoko Ogawa, it’s a safe bet that you’ll love The Ten Loves of Nishino.”—DozoDomo (France) Each woman has succumbed, even if only for an hour, to that seductive, imprudent, and furtively feline man who drifted so naturally into their lives. Still clinging to the vivid memory of his warm breath and his indecipherable sentences, ten women tell their stories as they attempt to recreate the image of the unfathomable Nishino. Like a modern Decameron, this humorous, sensual, and touching novel by one of Japan’s best-selling and most beloved writers is a powerful and embracing portrait of the human comedy in ten voices. Driven by desires that are at once unique and common, the women in this book are modern, familiar to us, and still mysterious. A little like Nishino himself.

The Ten Loves of Nishino

Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize, Strange Weather in Tokyo is a story of loneliness and love that defies age. Tsukiko, thirty-eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, "Sensei," in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him "Sensei" ("Teacher"). He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love. As Tsukiko and Sensei grow to know and love one another, time's passing is marked by Kawakami's gentle hints at the changing seasons: from warm sake to chilled beer, from the buds on the trees to the blooming of the cherry blossoms. Strange Weather in Tokyo is a moving, funny, and immersive tale of modern Japan and old-fashioned romance.

Strange Weather in Tokyo: A Novel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by KAWAKAMI, Hiromi. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by KAWAKAMI, Hiromi

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by KAWAKAMI, Hiromi. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Nakano Thrift Shop (Thorndike Press Large Print Peer Picks)

The Briefcase

Manazuru

Manazuru

Parade: A Folktale

Under the Eye of the Big Bird: A Novel

People from My Neighborhood: Stories

The Nakano Thrift Shop: A Novel

The Ten Loves of Nishino

Strange Weather in Tokyo: A Novel