How to find books from or set in different countries – JAPAN

Discover your next great read with Whichbook.net.

Whichbook.net is a resource for finding books that are from or set in different countries. You can also look up works by their individual characteristics. You can even match moods and emotions to your unread next read. Free access, no limit, and it’s fun!

Image Credit: Aspen Card Catalog; Image Link

Out | Natsuo Kirino

Check it out in our online card catalog!

Summary: Set in modern Japan, this is a tense and compelling read. It tells the tale of four ordinary working-class women and the profound effect that one event has on their lives. Hooked from the first page and couldn’t put it down.

Recommendation: Whichbook provides multiple methods by which you might find a new item to read. Explore this link to play with the software yourself: https://www.whichbook.net/world-map/

Visit each country in turn to discover works you MIGHT find through the Smithton Public Library District (all those titles recommended here ARE available through our system for borrowing).

Image Credit: Aspen Card Catalog; Image Link

The Cat and the City | Nick Bradley

Check it out in our online card catalog!

Summary: In Tokyo – one of the world’s largest megacities – a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways. But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers – from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo’s denizens, drawing them ever closer. In a series of spellbinding, interlocking narratives – with styles ranging from manga to footnotes – Nick Bradley has hewn a novel of interplay and estrangement; of survival and self-destruction; of the desire to belong and the need to escape. Formally inventive and slyly political, The Cat and The City is a lithe thrill-ride through the less-glimpsed streets of Tokyo.

Recommendation: Whichbook provides multiple methods by which you might find a new item to read. Explore this link to play with the software yourself: https://www.whichbook.net/world-map/

Visit each country in turn to discover works you MIGHT find through the Smithton Public Library District (all those titles recommended here ARE available through our system for borrowing).

Image Credit: Aspen Card Catalog; Image Link

Tokyo Year Zero | David Peace

Check it out in our online card catalog!

Summary: Japan 1946. Is the narrator a Japanese detective involved in tracking a serial killer? Or a Japanese soldier obsessed by atrocities committed in China? Or perhaps a madman? In a unique style, this book will take the reader on an involved and involving journey where nothing may be as it appears.

Recommendation: Whichbook provides multiple methods by which you might find a new item to read. Explore this link to play with the software yourself: https://www.whichbook.net/world-map/

Visit each country in turn to discover works you MIGHT find through the Smithton Public Library District (all those titles recommended here ARE available through our system for borrowing).

Image Credit: Aspen Card Catalog; Image Link

The Buddha in the Attic | Julie Otsuka

Check it out in our online card catalog!

Summary: Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.

Recommendation: Whichbook provides multiple methods by which you might find a new item to read. Explore this link to play with the software yourself: https://www.whichbook.net/world-map/

Visit each country in turn to discover works you MIGHT find through the Smithton Public Library District (all those titles recommended here ARE available through our system for borrowing).

Image Credit: Aspen Card Catalog; Image Link

The Great Fire | Shirley Hazzard

Check it out in our online card catalog!

Summary: In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier find that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself.

Recommendation: Whichbook provides multiple methods by which you might find a new item to read. Explore this link to play with the software yourself: https://www.whichbook.net/world-map/

Visit each country in turn to discover works you MIGHT find through the Smithton Public Library District (all those titles recommended here ARE available through our system for borrowing).

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Smithton Public Library

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