Empfehlungen basierend auf "Sweetness and Lightning"

From the bestselling author of Kafka on the Shore: A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, “a masterly novel” (The New York Times Book Review) blending the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man’s hopeless and heroic first love. Now with a new introduction by the author. Toru, a serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. As Naoko retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. Stunning and elegiac, Norwegian Wood first propelled Haruki Murakami into the forefront of the literary scene.

Tina Suzuki has just begun her first year of graduate study. Born and raised in San Francisco by her Japanese immigrant mother, Tina knows nothing about the rest of her family, and very little about her cultural heritage. But when her boyfriend's Japanese calligraphy teacher suffers a stroke, loses his ability to communicate, but continues to create magnificent calligraphic art, Tina knows she has stumbled across an ideal research subject. Getting people to cooperate with her research is an entirely different matter. The blank personal history presented by her mother is in fact a tightly wound scroll full of scandalous secrets. Tina's studies lead to revelations about her own family - secrets she would never have expected. Juxtaposed with Tina's story is that of the stricken calligraphy teacher as a young man in Kyoto, and the history of the ancient inkstone he carries with him.

Alternate cover edition here.High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance.

Flo is sick of Tokyo. Suffering from a crisis in confidence, she is stuck in a rut, her translation work has dried up and she's in a relationship that's run its course. That's until she stumbles upon a mysterious book left by a fellow passenger on the Tokyo Subway. From the very first page, Flo is transformed and immediately feels compelled to translate this forgotten novel, a decision which sets her on a path that will change her life...It is a story about Ayako, a fierce and strict old woman who runs a coffee shop in the small town of Onomichi, where she has just taken guardianship of her grandson, Kyo. Haunted by long-buried family tragedy, both have suffered extreme loss and feel unable to open up to each other. As Flo follows the characters across a year in rural Japan, through the ups and downs of the pair's burgeoning relationship, she quickly realises that she needs to venture outside the pages of the book to track down its elusive author. And, as her two protagonists reveal themselves to have more in common with her life than first meets the eye, the lines between text and translator converge. The journey is just beginning.From the author of The Cat and The City, Four Seasons in Japan is a gorgeously crafted book-within-a-book about literature, purpose and what it is to belong.

Bringing together Yukio Mishima's finest stories, this selection shows his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance. A moonlit journey to fulfil a wish; a mother lost in mourning; a night of infidelity; and a young lieutenant who ends his life. Filled with rich description and luxurious beauty, these hauntingly beautiful short stories from one of Japan's greatest writers show the pull between duty and desire, ecstasy and death. In the title story, 'Death in Midsummer', which is set at a beach resort, a triple tragedy becomes a cloud of doom that requires exorcising. In another, 'Patriotism', a young army officer and his wife choose a way of vindicating their belief in ancient values that is as violent as it is traditional; it prefigured his own death by seppuku in November 1970. There is a story in which the sad truth of the relationship between a businessman and his former mistress is revealed through a suggestion of the unknown, and another in which a working-class couple, touching in their simple love for each other, pursue financial security by rather shocking means.

This fascinating collection gave birth to a new paradigm when Akira Kurosawa made famous Akutagawa's disturbing tale of seven people recounting the same incident from shockingly different perspectives. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, Ryunosuke Akutagawa created disturbing stories out of Japan's cultural upheaval. Whether his fictions are set centuries past or close to the present, Akutagawa was a modernist, writing in polished, superbly nuanced prose subtly exposing human needs and flaws. "In a Grove," which was the basis for Kurosawa's classic film Rashomon, tells the chilling story of the killing of a samurai through the testimony of witnesses, including the spirit of the murdered man. The fable-like "Yam Gruel" is an account of desire and humiliation, but one in which the reader's sympathy is thoroughly unsettled. And in "The Martyr," a beloved orphan raised by Jesuit priests is exiled when he refuses to admit that he made a local girl pregnant. He regains their love and respect only at the price of his life. All six tales in the collection show Akutagawa as a master storyteller and an exciting voice of modern Japanese literature.

A classic spy novel from the bestselling author, Trevanian, about a westerner raised in Japan who becomes one of the world's most accomplished assassins. Nicholai Hel is the world’s most wanted man. Born in Shanghai during the chaos of World War I, he is the son of an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father and is the protégé of a Japanese Go master. Hel survived the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished—and well-paid—assassin. Hel is a genius, a mystic, and a master of language and culture, and his secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection known only as shibumi. Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his exquisite mistress, Hel is unwillingly drawn back into the life he’d tried to leave behind when a beautiful young stranger arrives at his door, seeking help and refuge. It soon becomes clear that Hel is being tracked by his most sinister enemy—a supermonolith of international espionage known only as the Mother Company. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other . . . shibumi.

Yoko (winner of the Akutagawa Prize in 1971) is the story of a sensitive young man's relationship with the title character, a beautiful young woman who is suffering from an apparently hereditary mental illness. Through Y¯ko's vivid but distorted perceptions of the world, Furui highlights the process by which reality and identity are created. Above all, however, Yoko is a touching, if somewhat unusual, tale of a young couple's deepening love.The other two short stories in this collection, "The Plain of Sorrows" and "The Doll," deal with the subject of coming to terms with aging and death, thus shifting the focus from the crises of young adulthood to those of middle age."This important author's work has been hard to find in the West, and one is grateful for the translations and accompanying commentaries by Donna George Storey."--William Ferguson, New York Times Book ReviewFurui Yoshikichi has won the Akutagawa Prize (1971), the Nihon Bungaku Taisho¯ (1980), the Tanizaki Prize (1983), the Kawabata Yasunari Prize (1988), and the Yomiuri Prize (1989).Donna George Storey is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Japanese Literature, University of California, Berkeley.

The internationally bestselling author of the beloved Morisaki Bookshop series welcomes us back to the Torunka Café, down a narrow side street in the Tokyo neighborhood of Yakata, run by its stern-seeming owner, Tachibana, and his teenage daughter Shizuku. Stopping in for a cup of coffee or a sweet treat at the Torunka Café, locals and tourists from all stages and walks of life experience interactions and small miracles that unexpectedly offer joy and connection. A little old lady named Chiyoko Obāchan sits alone in a corner with her balls of yarn and knitting needles. One day, hearing a Chopin melody playing in the café she is reminded of the days of her lost youth, when she fell in love for the first time. Shizuku's childhood friend Kōta is fiercely protective and believes he's responsible for keep her safe. But as he confronts the limits of his own strength, he finds help in a surprising place when a film crew arrives at the café's door. Ayako, a quotation-loving illustrator, is at a crossroads, feeling burned out by her career yet not knowing what direction to take next. Then, a chance encounter with an old friend changes everything. Charming and delightfully heartwarming, More Days at the Torunka Café is a delicious and satisfying slice of life in all its flavor. Wise and endearing, it reminds us that all our lives are threads in the beautiful and wondrous tapestry of humanity.

Every Samurai knows a sword contains the soul of the warrior it was made for.With Riley missing, Madison teams up with Recall to do a time travel heist. Accompanied by her friend Chi, she travels back to Edo Japan, circa 1600, to steal the Dragon's Breath, an ancient Samurai sword with a rich source of temporal power in the handle. A Recall agent in the period helps them get jobs as entertainers in the home of the family protecting the sword. By day, the girls practise their routine. By night, among the blossoms of a Japanese garden, they make plans to steal the sword which is guarded by a trio of powerful Samurai. Brute force is not an option; it's the ninja's art they must learn to achieve their goal. Will they secure the blade and get Riley back? Or will the enemy agent betray them and leave them at the mercy of some of history's fiercest warriors?A high-stakes fast-paced time travel adventure in Edo Japan.