Item category 1: World Paperback

In the last days of World War II, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria has collapsed. As the Chinese move in, the elders of the Japanese settler village of Sakito decide to preserve their honour by killing all the villagers in an act of mass suicide. Only 16-year-old Tatsuru escapes. But Tatsuru'...

A woman reclaims her own story in this taut and wholly original literary tale from one of China's literary superstars. Hongmei is the perfect Chinese wife: beautiful, diligent, passive. Glen is the perfect American husband: intelligent, caring, well-off. From the outside, Hongmei and Glen's life ...

In 'Dream of Ding Village', Yan Lianke addresses the AIDS blood-contamination scandal in Henan province, where villagers were coerced into selling vast quantities of blood and then infected with the AIDS virus as they were injected with plasma to prevent anaemia.

With the Yi River on one side and the Balou Mountains on the other, the village of Explosion was founded 1000 years ago by refugees fleeing a volcanic eruption. But in the post-Mao era, the name takes on a new significance as the rural community grows explosively from a small village to a town to...

In revolutionary struggle, if you don't defeat your enemy, your enemy will defeat you. On his return to his hometown - and his wife - to aid the Cultural Revolution, soldier Aijun sees a young woman wandering barefoot along the railway tracks in the warm late-afternoon sun. Her name is Hongmei. F...

To tell the truth, religious faith is really just a matter of believing stories. The world is governed by stories, and it is for the sake of stories that everyone lives on this Earth. Yahui is a young Buddhist at university. But this is no ordinary university. It is populated by every faith in Ch...

'Can't I Go Instead' follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant in the early 20th century. When the daughter's suitor is arrested as a Korean Independence activist, and she is implicated during the investigation, she is quickly forced into marriage to one of her fa...

Matsui is the driver of a taxi the colour of the night sky. Every night between the hours of 1 am and 4.30 am, Matsui guides his taxi around the streets of Tokyo, collecting passengers and their stories. Seen through the eyes of a cast of colourful characters, 'Goodnight Tokyo' takes the reader o...

'Kitchen' juxtaposes two tales about mothers, transsexuality, bereavement, kitchens, love and tragedy in contemporary Japan.

It was the beginning of summer, and I was 19 years old. Yayoi lives with her perfect, loving family - something 'like you'd see in a Spielberg movie'. But while her parents tell happy stories of her childhood, she is increasingly haunted by the sense that she's forgotten something important about...