The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘ s 猫を抱いて象と泳 [Swim with an Elephant Holding a Cat]. Our hero is brought up by his grandparents but remains a loner. One day he meets a former bus driver, now massively overweight, who teaches him chess, both how to play and the philosophy behind it. However … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s 凍りついた香り [The Scent of Ice]. Ryoko is living with Hiroyuki, a perfumer. They had celebrated their first year together and he had made her a special scent. The best day he kills himself. Ryoko wants to know why and, with the help of his younger brother, … Read more
The latest addition to my website isHaruki Murakami‘s とその不確かな (The City and Its Uncertain Walls). Our unnamed seventeen year old loner hero meets a sixteen year loner girl. She insists that she is just a shadow and her real self is in a strange city which she describes. Late she will disappear and he reluctantly … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Paolo Giordano‘s Tasmania (Tasmania). Our narrator, called Paolo Giordano, is a science journalist. He is worried about private issues – particularly his marriage, not least because his wife cannot get pregnant but also worldwide issues, such as climate change and terrorism but others as well. He is unsure … Read more
The latest addition to my website isAmélie Nothomb‘s L’impossible retour [The Impossible Return]. In this book, Amélie Nothomb returns to Japan, where she had lived earlier in her life, with a female photographer friend, who had won a photography competition with free travel for two as the prize. The friend, Pep, turns out to be … Read more
The latest addition to my website isYōko Ogawa‘s 沈黙博物館 [Museum of Silence]. A Japanese museumologist is invited by a cantankerous elderly lady to set up a museum in the remote village where she and her adoptive daughter live. Only after a while does he learn what the museum is – a collection of items taken … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kōbō Abe‘s 方舟さくら丸 (The Ark Sakura). A man we know only as Mole lives in a huge underground abandoned quarry, preparing himself for the inevitable nuclear Armageddon. He is well stocked with food, weapons and other necessities but has not found anyone suitable to share his fate. At … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hiromi Kawakami‘s 三度目The (Third Love). As is usual with Kawakami, this book is about love and its many complications. Riko falls in love with the older Naa-Chan when she is two and, much later, they will marry. However, Naa-Chan has a series of relationships which naturally upsets her. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yōko Ogawa‘s ホテル・アイリス (Hotel Iris). Mari, a seventeen year old Japanese woman works in her mother’s hotel and has no life of her own. There is an argument between a prostitute and her client in one of the rooms. Later Mari sees the man, a translator from Russian, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tatsuhiko Shibusawa‘s 高丘親王航海記 (Takaoka’s Travels). This is a highly imaginative and colourful account of the travels of the very real Prince Takaoka around South-East Asia as he tries to get to Hindustan and the birthplace of the Buddha. The book is set in the ninth century. Quite a … Read more