The Square Persimmon and Other Stories is an introduction to Takashi Atoda—one of Japan's most popular and versatile writers of fiction. Takashi Atocia is a master storyteller. Like the bar madam in "The Glow of Lipstick," he is capable of weaving a tale that captures the reader's attention from beginning to end. His plots deal with ordinary people, yet the emotional impact of each story is unusually strong. His down-to-earth characters inhabit a world that may at first appear familiar, but Atoda can so manipulate a scene that suddenly the reader is wondering whether it is reality or illusion that he is observing. Many stories feature bizarre endings. In these eleven stories, Atoda examines universal themes-first love, lost love, change, fate-through unmistakably Japanese eyes. The dreamlike quality of some stories invites the reader to draw his own conclusions in the denouement. Yet, in each one, Atoda brings to bear his precise style and his own unique vision, by turns mysterious, romantic, darkly humorous, and even bizarre.

DIV DIVDIVTwelve stories of women caught in the emotional turbulence of romance in Manhattan/divDIV /div/divDIVFor the twelve narrators of Susan Minot’s breathtaking collection—artists and lawyers, teenagers and thirty-somethings—love in New York doesn’t come easy. And as they struggle to reconcile their yearnings for romance with their needs for independence, they face resistance to emotional commitment at every turn. /divDIV /divDIVIn intense snapshots of these women’s most intimate moments, Minot brings to life their dreams and disappointments, hopes and heartbreaks, and highlights the emotional fissures that divide women and men./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features a new illustrated biography of Susan Minot, including artwork by the author and rare documents and photos from her personal collection./div /div

"Lane Dunlop's translations read elegantly, and his selection of modern Japanese Stories is both fresh and persuasive." —Donald Keene, Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. The fourteen distinct voices of this collection tell fourteen very different stories spanning sixty years of twentieth-century Japanese literature. They include a nostalgic portrait of an aristocratic Meiji family in Kafu Nagai's "The Fox," a surprisingly cheerful celebration of postwar chaos in Sakaguchi Ango's "One Woman and the War," a chilly assessment of the modern society in Watanabe Junichi's "Invitation to Suicide," and much more. The writers also represent a wide spectrum, from renowned figure of Yasunari Kawabata, winner of the Noble Prize for Literature in 1968, to authors whose works have never before been translated into English. Westerners familiar only with stereotypical images of bowing geisha and dark-suited businessmen will be surprised by the cast of characters translator Lane Dunlop introduces in this anthology. Lovers of fiction and student of Japan are certain to find these stories absorbing, engaging and instructive.

The little girl and the rapeseed flower -- As far as Abashiri -- The razor -- The paper door -- Seibei and his gourds -- An incident -- Han's crime -- At Kinosaki -- Akanishi Kakita -- Incident on the afternoon of November third -- The shopboy's god -- Rain frogs -- The house by the moat -- A memory of Yamashina -- Infatuation -- Kuniko -- A gray moon

Intertwined portraits of courage and hope in Afghanistan and Pakistan Najmah, a young Afghan girl whose name means "star," suddenly finds herself alone when her father and older brother are conscripted by the Taliban and her mother and newborn brother are killed in an air raid. An American woman, Elaine, whose Islamic name is Nusrat, is also on her own. She waits out the war in Peshawar, Pakistan, teaching refugee children under the persimmon tree in her garden while her Afghan doctor husband runs a clinic in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. Najmah's father had always assured her that the stars would take care of her, just as Nusrat's husband had promised that they would tell Nusrat where he was and that he was safe. As the two look to the skies for answers, their fates entwine. Najmah, seeking refuge and hoping to find her father and brother, begins the perilous journey through the mountains to cross the border into Pakistan. And Nusrat's persimmon-tree school awaits Najmah's arrival. Together, they both seek their way home. Known for her award-winning fiction set in South Asia, Suzanne Fisher Staples revisits that part of the world in this beautifully written, heartrending novel. Under the Persimmon Tree is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

This classic Japanese story by Soseki Netsume—the foremost novelist of the Meiji Period--is a masterpiece of Japanese literature. This book demonstrates Soseki Natsume's ability to dissect and elucidate the human personality in all its complexity. Here, his facile blending of narrative, extended monologue and sharp dialog leaves the reader with an almost personal knowledge of the characters. We are introduced to Keitaro, a recent college graduate hunting for his first job; he is the hero through whose eyes the other characters are seen. There is also Morimoto, the young adventurer with his tall tales; Sunaga, a troubled young man whose moving story forms the center of the novel; Taguchi, Sunaga's fun–loving yet practical uncle; Matsumoto, another uncle–a high–class "idler," but wise in his own way; and Chiyoko, Sunaga's cousin and apparently the cause of much of his distress. Keitaro does not merely tell us the story of the others, however. Their lives are a part of his elucidation beyond that of the world of academia, and his knowing them enables him eventually to experience, however directly or indirectly, the romantic, the practical, the philosophical, and the existential.