Fiction in translation

  • We Do Not Part

    £9.99

    One morning in December, Kyungha is called to her friend Inseon’s hospital bedside. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation following a wood-chopping accident, Inseon is bedridden and begs Kyungha to take the first plane to her home on Jeju Island to feed her pet bird, who will quickly die unless it receives food. Unfortunately, as Kyungha arrives a snowstorm hits. Lost in a world of snow, she begins to wonder if she will arrive in time to save the bird – or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. But she doesn’t yet suspect the darkness which awaits her at her friend’s house. There, the long-buried story of Inseon’s family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive, documenting the terrible massacre seventy years before that saw 30,000 Jeju civilians murdered.

  • Macbeth

    £10.99

    He’s the best cop they’ve got. When a drug bust turns into a bloodbath it’s up to Inspector Macbeth and his team to clean up the mess. He’s also an ex-drug addict with a troubled past. He’s rewarded for his success. Power. Money. Respect. They’re all within reach. But a man like him won’t get to the top. Plagued by hallucinations and paranoia, Macbeth starts to unravel. He’s convinced he won’t get what is rightfully his. Unless he kills for it.

  • Tarantula

    £10.99

    Thought-provoking and powerfully ambivalent, this book offers an extraordinary meditation on the many complex afterlives of the Holocaust. It is a novel about individual and collective inheritance, individual and collective violence; about memory, trauma, connection and estrangement. It asks what it means to be a Jew in the long wake of the 20th century, and how the past lives on in the present.

  • The Paper House

    £10.99

    On a spring day in 1998, literature professor Bluma Lennon buys a used copy of Emily Dickinson’s poems from a Soho bookshop. Moments after she starts reading it, she’s struck by a car on a street corner and killed. After her funeral, one of her colleagues – the book’s narrator – receives a package addressed to Bluma: a broken-spined old copy of Conrad’s The Shadow-Line, inscribed with her own dedication. Intrigued, he sets off on a quest that leads him to Buenos Aires, searching for clues about Carlos Brauer, a devoted book collector, and his mysterious connection to Bluma. Already a worldwide classic in its genre, The Paper House is a venture beyond our shadow lines, and what we fear to leave behind to cross them.

  • Bloody Awful in Different Ways

    £9.99

    Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev’s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet. Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or canoe enthusiasts, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame – but even she can’t control how they behave.

  • Hot Chocolate on Thursday

    £14.99

    Across a bridge, in view of cherry blossom lies the Marble Cafe where a woman writes in a notebook and a young waiter prepares her favourite hot drink. Both wonder about each other and about the other lives of the clientele who frequent this magical little cafe behind the trees. Without even realizing it, we may touch and change someone else’s life. Taking a walk along the river, cooking the best tamagoyaki, ordering hot chocolate, forgetting to remove our nail polish. The small, everyday acts that we do can offer unexpected encounters and ultimately change a life.

  • Advent

    £12.99

    Every winter, in the days leading up to Christmas, Benedikt walks into the snowy mountains of Iceland to rescue sheep lost in the blizzards. With his dog and his ram by his side, traversing wild snowstorms and crystalline nights, fuelled by endless cups of hot coffee, Benedikt dedicates himself to helping other living beings in need. It is midwinter in the harshest of landscapes, but this is a place of deep belonging and peace – brutal and remorseless yet irresistible and indispensable. It is also a time of peace, filled with the anticipation of that special time of year – the days before Christmas: Advent. This enchanting Icelandic classic of one man’s selfless quest at Christmas time has been newly translated into English for the first time in 90 years.

  • Super-Frog Saves Tokyo

    £14.99

    Katagiri found a giant frog waiting for him in his apartment. It was powerfully built, standing over six feet tall on its hind legs. A skinny little man no more than five foot three, Katagiri was overwhelmed by the frog’s imposing bulk. ‘Call me ‘Frog,” said the frog in a clear, strong voice. Katagiri stood rooted in the doorway, unable to speak. ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m not here to hurt you. Just come and close the door. Please.’ Briefcase in his right hand, grocery bag with fresh vegetables and canned salmon cradled in his left arm, Katagiri didn’t dare move. ‘Please, Mr. Katagiri, hurry and close the door, and take off your shoes.’

  • Bookstore Girls

    £14.99

    Riko Nishioka is deputy manager of the Pegasus Shobo Kichijoji bookstore. After five years working part-time, she’s finally secured a full-time position at the age of forty. But now she has a nemesis. Aki Kobata, twenty-seven, has waltzed in as a full-time employee thanks to her family connections. A free spirit with a rebellious streak and a silver spoon in her mouth, she’s anything but a team player. The two are always clashing – both at work and over their personal lives. But when Riko is given notice that the store will be closing in six months’ time, they face a stark choice. Can they put their petty enmities aside to boost sales and save their livelihoods or will they go down fighting each other?

  • Sympathy Tower Tokyo

    £10.99

    Welcome to the Japan of tomorrow. Here, the practice of a radical sympathy toward criminals has become the norm and a grand skyscraper in the heart of Tokyo is planned to house wrongdoers in compassionate comfort – Sympathy Tower Tokyo. Acclaimed architect Sara Machina has been tasked with designing the city’s new centrepiece, but is riven by doubt. Haunted by a terrible crime she experienced as a young girl, she wonders if she might inherently disagree with the values of the project, which should be the pinnacle of her career. As Sara grapples with these conflicting emotions, her relationship with her gorgeous – and much younger – boyfriend grows increasingly strained. In search of solace, in need of creative inspiration, Sara turns to the knowing words of an AI chatbot.

  • Swallows

    £15.99

    Twenty-nine-year-old Riki is sick of her dead-end job, of struggling to get by ever since she moved to Tokyo from the country. So when someone offers her the chance to become a surrogate in return for a life-changing amount of money, it’s hard to turn down. But how much of herself will she be forced to give away? Retired ballet star Motoi and his wife, Yuko, have spent years trying to conceive. As Yuko begins to make peace with her childlessness, Motoi grows increasingly desperate for a child to whom he can pass on his elite genes. Their last resort is surrogacy; a business transaction, plain and simple. But as they try to exert ever more control over Riki, their contract with her starts to slip through their fingers.

  • The Midnight Shift

    £14.99

    The bestselling cult classic in Korea; for fans of Mariana Enriquez, Asako Yuzuki, and Bora Chung