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Recommendations based on The Memory Policeby Yōko Ogawa
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A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
A powerful tale of four friends navigating life's hardships and the devastating effects of trauma.
The novel follows the lives of four friends in New York City from college through to middle-age. It focuses particularly on Jude, a lawyer with a mysterious past, ambiguous ethnicity, and unexplained ... (Wikipedia)
Breasts and Eggs
by Mieko Kawakami
A story of three women in contemporary Japan, exploring the complexities of womanhood, motherhood, and the female body.
Challenging every preconception about storytelling and prose style, mixing wry humor and riveting emotional depth, Kawakami is today one of Japan’s most important and best-selling writers. She ... (Goodreads)
The Housekeeper and the Professor
by Yōko Ogawa
A gentle story of friendship and understanding between a brilliant mathematician and his housekeeper.
The narrator's housekeeping agency dispatches her to the house of the Professor, a former mathematician who can remember new memories for only 80 minutes. She is more than a little frustrated to find ... (Wikipedia)
Revenge
by Yōko Ogawa
A vengeful tale of a woman determined to exact justice and reclaim her stolen childhood.
Sinister forces draw together a cast of desperate characters in this eerie and absorbing novel from Yoko Ogawa. An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has ... (Goodreads)
Convenience Store Woman
by Sayaka Murata
A darkly comic story of a woman's search for acceptance and belonging in a society that doesn't fit her.
Keiko Furukura is a 36-year old woman who has been working part-time at a convenience store , or konbini , for the last 18 years. She has known since childhood that she is "different" and that ... (Wikipedia)
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
by Ursula K. Le Guin
The inhabitants of a utopian society must decide if the cost of their ideal is too high.
The only chronological element of the work is that it begins by describing the first day of summer in Omelas, a shimmering city of unbelievable happiness and delight. In Omelas, the summer solstice ... (Wikipedia)
A Gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles
A Russian aristocrat's life of imprisonment in a grand hotel, discovering the beauty of life in confinement.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel With his breakout debut novel, ... (Goodreads)
Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the boundaries between the real and surreal.
Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd-numbered chapters tell the 15-year-old ... (Wikipedia)
If We Were Villains
by M.L. Rio
A group of friends, studying Shakespeare at a private university, become entangled in a mystery.
The evening before he is due to be released on parole after serving ten years for an unspecified crime, Oliver Marks is approached by the lead investigator on his case, Detective Colborne. Suspicious ... (Wikipedia)
Severance
by Ling Ma
A millennial office worker navigates a post-apocalyptic world plagued by a deadly virus.
The narrative follows Candace Chen after societal collapse due to the Shen Fever pandemic and in flashbacks to her earlier life. Candace and her parents emigrate from Fuzhou , China to Salt Lake City ... (Wikipedia)
The Likeness
by Tana French
A murder investigation reveals secrets of a young woman's past, threatening her present.
The story follows the efforts of detective Cassie Maddox to determine the circumstances surrounding the death of Lexie Madison, a young woman who is her doppelgänger . , The dead woman not only ... (Wikipedia)
The Cat Who Saved Books
by Sōsuke Natsukawa
A heartwarming tale of a cat who saves a bookstore from closing down by bringing in customers and spreading joy.
AN INDIE NEXT PICK! From the #1 bestselling author in Japan comes a celebration of books, cats, and the people who love them, infused with the heartwarming spirit of, The Guest Cat, and, The ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
An outrageous satire of race and civil rights in modern America.
The novel concerns a narrator, referred to by his childhood nickname "Bonbon" or his last name, "Me," who attempts to reintroduce segregation and keep a slave named Hominy in Dickens, his Los Angeles ... (Wikipedia)
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Post-apocalyptic exploration of a world drastically changed after a pandemic.
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse,, Station Eleven, tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of ... (Barnes & Noble)
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
A letter from a son to his illiterate mother, exploring their family's history and his own coming-of-age as a gay Vietnamese-American.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began ... (Goodreads)
The Bride Test
by Helen Hoang
Khai Diep avoids relationships due to his autism until his mother travels to Vietnam to find him a bride. Emotions: Heartwarming, Romantic, Emotional, Hopeful
Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions—like grief. And love. He thinks ... (Goodreads)
Moon of the Crusted Snow
by Waubgeshig Rice
A remote Anishinaabe community faces an unexpected crisis as the power grid fails and the outside world becomes unreachable.
A daring post-apocalyptic thriller from a powerful rising literary voice With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic ... (Goodreads)
Exit Strategy
by Martha Wells
Murderbot is back, trying to protect its human friends while navigating dangerous situations and uncovering corporate conspiracies.
Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right? Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of ... (Goodreads)
Bring Up the Bodies
by Hilary Mantel
A gripping historical drama recounting the downfall of Anne Boleyn during the reign of Henry VIII.
Bring Up the Bodies follows closely upon the events of Wolf Hall . The King and Cromwell —now Master Secretary to the King's Privy Council—are guests of the Seymour family at Wolf Hall. The King ... (Wikipedia)
The Story of a New Name
by Elena Ferrante
Two young women's search for identity and independence in a patriarchal society.
In 2012, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New ... (Goodreads)
Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
An exploration of the life of a small-town woman, revealing her struggles and emotional complexities.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition – its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires. At times stern, at other times ... (Goodreads)
The Dark Forest
by Liu Cixin
Humanity faces a daunting challenge when an alien race threatens the existence of our species.
This is the second novel in "Remembrance of Earth’s Past", the near-future trilogy written by the China's multiple-award-winning science fiction author, Cixin Liu. In The Dark Forest , Earth is ... (Goodreads)
Solaris
by Stanisław Lem
A psychological exploration of a distant planet, uncovering the truth behind its strange and mysterious phenomena.
Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life inhabiting a distant alien planet named Solaris. The planet is almost completely covered with an ... (Wikipedia)
The Guest Cat
by Takashi Hiraide
A family's unexpected bond with an unexpected guest cat brings joy and peace to their lives.
A bestseller in France and winner of Japan’s Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, The Guest Cat , by the acclaimed poet Takashi Hiraide, is a subtly moving and exceptionally beautiful novel about the ... (Goodreads)
My Absolute Darling
by Gabriel Tallent
A teenage girl's extraordinary journey of personal growth and transformation.
Julia "Turtle" Alveston, age fourteen, lives in California with her sociopathic father, Martin. He is convinced of impending catastrophe, forcing her to learn survivalist skills. Turtle is thus ... (Wikipedia)
Pachinko
by Lee Min-jin
A saga spanning four generations of a Korean family living in Japan, struggling to survive and thrive amidst prejudice and poverty.
The novel takes place over the course of three books: Book I Gohyang/Hometown, Book II Motherland, and Book III Pachinko. In 1883, in the little island fishing village of Yeongdo , which is a ferry ... (Wikipedia)
Cranford
by Elizabeth Gaskell
A charming portrait of a rural town and the lives of its eccentric inhabitants.
Mary Smith and her friends live in Cranford, a town predominantly inhabited by women. The return of a long-lost brother named Peter is the most dramatic event to occur over the course of the sixteen ... (Goodreads)
The Idiot
by Elif Batuman
A young woman's journey of self-discovery, learning to navigate the complexities of life.
Selin Karadağ is a freshman studying linguistics at Harvard University . She meets an older Hungarian mathematics student, Ivan, in a Russian language class and the two begin corresponding over ... (Wikipedia)
Ocean Sea
by Alessandro Baricco
A poetic exploration of the sea, full of stories and emotions.
This haunting, suspenseful tale of love and vengeance by the author of the international bestseller Silk surges with the hypnotic power of the ocean sea. In Ocean Sea , Alessandro Baricco presents a ... (Goodreads)
Strange Weather in Tokyo
by Hiromi Kawakami
A tale of love and friendship between two lonely people in Tokyo.
Tsukiko is drinking alone in her local sake bar when by chance she meets one of her old high school teachers and, unable to remember his name, she falls back into her old habit of calling him ... (Goodreads)
