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Shame
Mieko Kawakami
‘During sex, Narumi would picture herself as steamed rice being turned into mochi rice cakes.’
North Winds Blow the Leaves From the Trees
Yu Miri
‘I liked her quiet regard, the way it gave me a sense of loneliness.’
Nightingale
Marina Kemp
‘She knew it was a trick of the lonely to favour the rude to the simply unmoved; that the loneliest thing in these villages and in this most tucked-away of professions was to elicit no response at all.’
Marina Kemp’s debut novel Nightingale is shortlisted for the 2020 Young Writer of the Year Award.
An Unnecessary Man
Maha Harada
‘I’d lived for half a century, but I had no sense of what that meant; no particular reaction.’
The Bookmobile
Kotaro Isaka
‘He told me he had quit his job the day after the earthquake and came out here with nothing but a sleeping bag.’
VIO
Kanako Nishi
‘I had an odd feeling as I regarded Yō, who knew things about me that I hadn’t known.’
A Ghost in Brazil
Kikuko Tsumura
‘I was ever so keen to visit the Aran Islands, but unfortunately, I died before ever making it out of Japan.’
Girl Games
Makena Onjerika
‘There, behind glass panes separating you from the good children, from life itself, you are kept company by your dread.’
Nocturne
Yūshō Takiguchi
Jesse Kirkwood’s translation of ‘Nocturne’ by Yūshō Takiguchi is the winner of the 2020 Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize.
Selfish Little Thing
Olivia Rosenthall
‘I began to lie awake at night thinking about all the terrible things I’d ever done, listing them quietly in my head, each selfish little thing, my body numb with guilt.’
