Sam Bett

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 sent his publisher a terrible manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Shortly afterward, while moping around a park in suburban Tokyo, he spots someone drowning in a nearby aqueduct. He doesn’t want to become a witness to a suicide and eventually decides to flee the park. But as he is leaving, he trips over the boy who had been drowning, and the two begin an unlikely conversation that turns into an intellectual spat. Hoping to ingratiate himself with the boy?a high-school dropout?Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform in the boy’s stead that very night as the live narrator of a film screening... So begins the madcap adventure of The Beggar Student, where there is glamor in destitution, and intellectual one-upmanship reveals glimmers of truth. Replete with settings incorporated into the popular anime Bungo Stray Dogs and with echoes of No Longer Human, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.

Fierce, mixed-race fighter Shindo has been kidnapped by the yakuza. After brutally beating most of them in an attempt to escape, she is forced to work as a bodyguard to protect the gang boss's sheltered daughter Shoko, a strange, friendless eighteen-year-old who could order Shindo's death in a moment. At first Shindo derides Shoko's naivete, but as the men around them grow ever more bloodthirsty and controlling, she becomes ferociously devoted to her charge. However, she knows that if things continue as they are, neither woman can expect to survive much longer. But could there ever be a different life for two people like them?

From international literary sensation Mieko Kawakami comes All the Lovers in the Night, an extraordinary, deeply moving and insightful story set in contemporary Tokyo. Fuyuko Irie is a freelance proofreader in her thirties. Living alone, and unable to form meaningful relationships, she has little contact with anyone other than Hijiri, someone she works with. When she sees her reflection, she’s confronted with a tired and spiritless woman who has failed to take control of her own life. Her one source of solace: light. Every Christmas Eve, Fuyuko heads out to catch a glimpse of the lights that fill the Tokyo night. But it is a chance encounter with a man named Mitsutsuka that awakens something new in her. And so her life begins to change. As Fuyuko starts to see the world in a different light, painful memories from her past begin to resurface. Fuyuko needs to be loved, to be heard, and to be seen. But living in a small world of her own making, will she find the strength to bring down the walls that surround her? All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and captivating, pulsing and poetic, modern and shocking. It’s another unforgettable novel from Japan’s most exciting writer.