Tag - ted-goossen

 
 

TED GOOSSEN

In "Dragon Palace," Hiromi Kawakami's new collection of short stories, middle-aged and elderly characters inhabit a world in which sexuality and attractiveness are liberated.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 17, 2023
Hiromi Kawakami's 'Dragon Palace': Delightfully raunchy and funny
In her new collection of short stories, the author returns to a world of fluid transfiguration with dry matter-of-factness and knowing humor.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 1, 2022
New Monkey imprint broadens the reach of contemporary Japanese literature
Stone Bridge Press and Monkey magazine have joined forces to expand the literary landscape of Asian writings in translation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 16, 2022
Do you have what it takes to be a novelist? Let Haruki Murakami decide.
In “Novelist as a Vocation,” the prolific author paints himself as an everyman while giving frustratingly unclear advice on being a professional writer.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2020
Literary magazine Monkey serves up a full meal of delights
Monkey's inaugural volume features a who's who of contemporary Japanese literature, with a food theme to tie the contributions together.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 26, 2020
‘Reconciliation’ is an exemplar of the introspective I-novel genre
Naoya Shiga's confessional, autobiographical novella stands the test of time with its themes of relationships, grief and aging.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOKS ABOUT JAPAN
Feb 2, 2019
Familiar tropes but not much plot in Haruki Murakami's 'Killing Commendatore'
With Haruki Murakami's latest novel, 'Killing Commendatore,' die-hard fans might find something to enjoy in the writer's trademark, albeit under-edited, style, but one gets the feeling Murakami has gotten too comfortable with his own style.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 27, 2014
The Strange Library
Haruki Murakami's "The Strange Library" is a short story, not a novel. So why, one might wonder, has it been published as a single volume? Reading the story, two answers suggest themselves. The first is that, though it is short — 58 loosely printed pages of text — Murakami manages to endow those pages with all that we have come to expect from his more leviathan tomes. This account of a lad being held prisoner in a labyrinth beneath his neighborhood library, being forced to memorize the contents of three volumes on Ottoman tax collection, and being threatened with having his brains eaten, together with the presence of a sheep man, and also intrusions from a world as mundane as our own — a mother preparing dinner at home, a new pair of leather shoes — has all that any Murakami fan would want. There's no need to surround it with other stories.

Longform

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.
The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores