Books by Haruki Murakami

We asked Rie Qudan, author of the award-winning novel Sympathy Tower Tokyo, to recommend her favourite Japanese novels. She selected five 20th century classics that highlight different aspects of Japanese sensibility — from the aesthetics and obsessive devotion of a 1933 novella by Tanizaki, to the desire and alienation of a 1994 Murakami novel.

Japanese literature has always performed strongly on Five Books, so we’ve put together an overview of some of the books on our site by Japanese authors that have previously been recommended by our expert interviewees—from contemporary novels shortlisted for the International Booker Prize to classic works of literature, and everything in between.

If you enjoy some fantastical elements in your literature—but you aren’t quite ready for full-on swords and sorcery—then perhaps magical realism books are for you. As a genre, magical realism is often associated with South America, thanks in large part to the ‘father of magical realism’ Gabriel García Márquez and mega-bestselling books by Isabel Allende, but examples can be found from all over the world. We’ve put a list of must-read titles.

The novelist reveals amongst his book selection that Minnesota has the highest number of Korean adoptees in the US (14,000), and that one in every 250 Korean births is adopted by an American family

Many people have heard of manga and anime, but would be surprised to learn how deeply this niche is steeped in Japanese tradition and culture—or how often manga features strong, smart female leads, says Susan Napier, anime expert and Professor of the Japanese Program at Tufts University. Here, she picks five books that encapsulate manga and anime as both forms of art and cathartic re-workings of Japanese history.

Our deputy editor Cal Flyn compiles her autumnal literary fiction highlights: five freshly released and hotly anticipated new novels that you should have on your reading list in the fall of 2024: from Sally Rooney to Garth Greenwell.