Item category 1: World Paperback

The Icelandic Psychological Association has prepared a test. They call it a sensitivity assessment - a way of measuring a person's empathy. It is, they insist, merely a tool for identifying people who need extra resources. People with moral disorders. People who are likely to offend. In a few day...

First off, I'm not a violent man. Quite the opposite. I didn't even kill anyone until I was 42. Björn has been given an ultimatum: repair his work-life balance, or his wife Katharina will leave him - and take their daughter. He reluctantly starts a mindfulness class and to his surprise, it's a r...

Though he returned from America penniless, Nathan Stramer still daydreams of a better life. Raising six children with his wife Rywka in a poor area of Tarnw, he chases hare-brained schemes to make money while she fantasises about a trip to the seaside. Meanwhile, their children are taking steps o...

Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, plant-filled apartment in Neukolln. They are young digital creatives, freelancers without too many constraints. They have a passion for food, progressive politics, sexual experimentation and Berlin's twenty-four-hou...

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...

While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did ...

Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner. Running this unique establishment are a father-daughter duo who serve more than just mouth-watering feasts. The pair have reinvented themselves as 'food detectives', offering a service that goes beyond traditional dining. ...

In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the B...

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 for...

Sitting alone, overlooking the still and blue lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach surveys the men of the hotel bar. She is happily married and has no reason to escape the world she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels here to the island where her mother is buried, and...