Sylvia Plath's groundbreaking semi-autobiographical novel offers an intimate, honest and often wrenching glimpse into mental illness. The Bell Jar broke the boundaries between fiction and reality and helped cement Sylvia Plath's place as an enduring ... More details on The Bell Jar
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I’m stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, a...
The great Japanese author's most famous novel, in its first new English translation in half a century
No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he completed before his death.... More details on Kokoro
Sensei had just taken his clothes off and was about to go for a swim when I first laid eyes on him in the tea house. I had already had my swim, and was letting the wind blow gently on my wet body. Bet...
Shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award
Longlisted for the Believer Book Award
Longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller... More details on Convenience Store Woman
A convenience store is a world of sound. From the tinkle of the door chime to the voices of TV celebrities advertising new products over the in-store cable network, to the calls of the store workers, ...
The Setting Sun is a Japanese novel by Osamu Dazai. It was published in 1947 and is set in Japan after World War II. Principal characters are Kazuko, her brother Naoji, and their elderly mother. The story shows a family in decline and crisis, like ma... More details on The Setting Sun
Japanese in transcription is pronounced with the consonants as inEnglish and the vowels as in Italian. Thus, the name Naoji is pronounced nah-oh-jee.There is no marked stress accent, and one is safe i...
A visually stunning adaptation of Albert Camus' masterpiece that offers an exciting new graphic interpretation while retaining the book's unique atmosphere.
The day his mother dies, Meursault notices that it is very hot on the bus that is taking him ... More details on The Stranger
The old people’s home is at Marengo, about eighty kilometers from Algiers, I’ll take the two o’clock bus and get there in the afternoon. That way I can be there for the vigil and come back tomorrow ni...
A collection of powerful stories by one of the masters of Russian literature, illustrating Fyodor Dostoyevsky's thoughts on political philosophy, religion and above all, humanity.
From the primitive peasant who kills without understanding that he is ... More details on Notes from Underground
I am a sick person . . . A spiteful one. An unattractive person, too. I think my liver is diseased. But I don’t give a damn about my disease and in fact I don’t even know what’s wrong with me. I do no...
'There is in this world a kind of desire like stinging pain'
A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. He imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in the painting that obsesses him. Over and ov... More details on Confessions of a Mask
For many years I claimed I could remember things seen at the time of my own birth. Whenever I said so, the grownups would laugh at first, but then, wondering if they were not being tricked, they would...
A stunning "portrait of the enduring grace of friendship" (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.
A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
A MAN BOOKER PRIZE ... More details on A Little Life
THE ELEVENTH APARTMENT had only one closet, but it did have a sliding glass door that opened onto a small balcony, from which he could see a man sitting across the way, outdoors in only a T-shirt and ...
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt t... More details on Norwegian Wood
I WAS THIRTY-SEVEN THEN, STRAPPED IN MY SEAT AS THE HUGE 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport. Cold November rains drenched the earth and lent everything the gloomy...
Benedict Cumberbatch reads Franz Kafka's famous story of man-turned-insect, Metamorphosis
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018
After a night of troubled dreams, Gregor Samsa wakes to discover that he has turned into a huge, monstrous... More details on The Metamorphosis
WHEN GREGOR SAMSA WOKE ONE MORNING from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect. He was lying on his back—which was hard, like a carapac...