The unsettling story of a young man who suffers an identity crisis after getting tangled up in a telephone scam."A Kafkaesque journey of a lonely narrator being absorbed by an impersonal system." — Los Angeles Review of BooksThis novel centers on the "It's me" telephone scam—often targeting the elderly—that has escalated in Japan in recent years. Typically, the caller identifies himself only by saying, "Hey, it's me," and goes on to claim ...

In this novel-length road story, the female protagonist, who is haunted by an audio hallucination –‘twenty ells of linen are worth a coat’ – that plays over and over in her mind, escapes from a mental hospital with a young man. This is the story of their journey together.The hallucinatory words come from a passage in Marx's Das Kapital, but the protagonist knows nothing of that; nor does she understand what they literally mean. After she starts to hear them, she attempts suicide an...

In this novel-length road story, the female protagonist, who is haunted by an audio hallucination –‘twenty ells of linen are worth a coat’ – that plays over and over in her mind, escapes from a mental hospital with a young man. This is the story of their journey together.The hallucinatory words come from a passage in Marx's Das Kapital, but the protagonist knows nothing of that; nor does she understand what they literally mean. After she starts to hear them, she attempts suicide an...

In this novel-length road story, the female protagonist, who is haunted by an audio hallucination –‘twenty ells of linen are worth a coat’ – that plays over and over in her mind, escapes from a mental hospital with a young man. This is the story of their journey together.The hallucinatory words come from a passage in Marx's Das Kapital, but the protagonist knows nothing of that; nor does she understand what they literally mean. After she starts to hear them, she attempts suicide an...

Winner, 2025-2026 Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize, Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia UniversityIn the late fifteenth century, a young Dominican friar sets out on a journey from Paris to Florence in search of manuscripts of pre-Christian philosophy. Along the way, he encounters an ascetic alchemist in a small village. As the young man falls under the spell of the alchemist’s quest for enlightenment, a series of disasters—culminating in...

This novel centers on the “It’s me” telephone scam—often targeting the elderly—that has escalated in Japan in recent years. Typically, the caller identifies himself only by saying, “Hey, it’s me,” and goes on to claim in great distress that he’s been in an accident or lost some money with which he was entrusted at work, etc., and needs funds wired to his account right away.ME’s narrator is a nondescript young Tokyoite named Hitoshi Nagano who, on a whim, takes home a cell ...

The acclaimed debut of Japan's "master storyteller" ( Chicago Tribune).With the publication of Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, the literary world realized that Banana Yoshimoto was a young writer of enduring talent whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of contemporary Japanese literature. Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, t...

80TH BIRTHDAY EDITION - NOW WITH 10 NEW TALL TALES!THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Connolly's raucous run through his life is as furious, funny and foul-mouthed as you'd expect' Sunday TimesIn December 2018, after fifty years of belly-laughs, energy and outrage, Billy Connolly announced his retirement from live stand-up comedy. It had been an extraordinary career.When he fi...

“HUXLEY'S MASTERPIECE AND PERHAPS THE MOST ENJOYABLE BOOK ABOUT SPIRITUALITY EVER WRITTEN. .” — Washington Post Book WorldAldous Huxley's "brilliant" (Los Angeles Times) and gripping account of one of the strangest cases of demonic possession in history, hailed as the "peak achievement of Huxley’s career" by the New York TimesIn 1632 an entire convent in the small French village of Loudun was apparently possessed by the devil. After a sensational ...

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE*An unfulfilled college student hurtles through four parallel realities to explore the what-might've-been and the what-should-never-be in this Groundhog Day meets The Midnight Library–esque time loop novel from one of Japan’s most popular authors.Our protagonist, an unnamed junior at a prestigious university in Kyoto, is on the verge of dropping out. After rebelling against the dictatorial jock pres...

E. M. Cioran confronts the place of today's world in the context of human history-focusing on such major issues of the twentieth century as human progress, fanaticism, and science-in this nihilistic and witty collection of aphoristic essays concerning the nature of civilization in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Touching upon Man's need to worship, the feebleness of God, the downfall of the Ancient Greeks and the melancholy baseness of all existence, Cioran's pieces are pessimistic in the ex...

"What makes [this] novel so brilliant is an understanding of why women might willingly adhere to . . . performative femininity, even while they criticize it." ——Jo Hamya, The New York Times Book ReviewFrom the international bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs, "one of the most insightful and important writers of our time....[an] extraordinary exploration of relationships, work and the intimate connections that (may) make it al...