Fiction in translation

Based on the Japanese myth of cats returning favours to humans who are kind to them, 'The Full Moon Coffee Shop' is the name of a peculiar cake cafe that is run by talking cats, which has no fixed location and instead materialises unpredictably on the night of a full moon. The protagonists of thi...

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight. Soon they discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the...

Two teen sisters test the boundaries of adulthood on their dad's peacocking boss; a game between a woman's father and husband simmers and boils into scalding danger; a daughter creates an elaborate feast for her grieving mother. In these stories of suffocating atmosphere, the ordinary veers into ...

Louise has always felt adrift between communities: not deaf enough to be a part of deaf culture, not hearing enough to be fully within the hearing world. Hearing, for Louise, is inseparable from reading other people's lips. Through sight, she perceives words and strings them together like pearls ...

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgiv...

In a cosy photography studio in the mountains between this world and the next, someone is waking up as if from a dream. A kind man will hand them a hot cup of tea and gently explain that, having reached the end of their life, they have one final task. There is a stack of photos on their lap, one ...

In Tokyo, there is a neighbourhood with the highest number of bookstores in the world. It is called Jinbocho where book lovers can browse to their heart's delight and where hunters of first editions or autographed copies prowl the bookcases. The Morisaki bookshop, a small family-run shop, is so p...

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 mo...

Following the Kempowski family from the months before the outbreak of war through to the fall of Berlin, 'An Ordinary Youth' is the fascinating story of an ordinary childhood in extraordinary times. Here, Walter's academic struggle sits alongside his father's conscription; his brother's love of j...

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for over 100 years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. This beautiful tale tells the story of people who must face up to their past, in ord...