This is the second part of my November 2023 Book Haul. This features books written by non-American writers. Without more ado, here is the rest of the books I obtained in November. Happy reading!

Title: Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
Author: Satoshi Yagisawa
Translator (from Japanese): Eric Ozawa
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publishing Date: 2023 (2010)
No. of Pages: 147

Synopsis: Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence – until the day her boyfriend, Hideaki, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he’s been cheating on hear and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako’s life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression. In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Satoru.

An unusual man who has always pursued something of an unconventional life, especially after his wife, Momoko, left him out of the blue five years earlier, Satoru runs a secondhand bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo’s famous book district. Takako once looked down on Satoru’s life; now, she reluctantly accepts his offer of the tiny room above the bookshop rent-free in exchange for helping out at the store. The move is supposed to be temporary, until she can get back on her feet. But in the months that follow, Takako surprises herself when she develops a passion for books, becomes a regular at a local coffee shop where she makes new friends, and eventually meets a young editor from a nearby publishing house who’s going through his own messy breakup.

But just as she begins to find oy again, Hideaki reappears, forcing Takako to rely once again on her uncle, whose own life has begun to unravel. Together, these seeming opposites work to understand each other and themselves as they continue to share the wisdom they’ve gained in the bookshop.

Title: Brazil-Maru
Author: Karen Tei Yamashita
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Publishing Date: 1992
No. of Pages: 248

Synopsis: Karen Tei Yamashita’s eagerly anticipated second novel tells the little-known story of Brazil’s huge Japanese immigrant population This multi-generational saga relates one group’s attempt to build a utopia while surviving the suspicions of World War II, the conflict between individual freedom and community responsibility, and the dangeo=rous allure of a charismatic leader.

Karen Tei Yamashita went to Brazil in 1975 on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and spent two years following the path of one particular immigrant story which began in Sao Paulo. She married a Brazilian and stayed in Brazil for nine years before returning with her family to her native California. She won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her first novel, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, and her plays have been produced at a variety of West Coast locations.

Title: Woman Running in the Mountains
Author: YΕ«ko Tsushima
Translator (from Japanese): Geraldine Harcourt
Publisher: New York Review Books
Publishing Date: 2022 (1980)
No. of Pages: 275

Synopsis: Alone at dawn, in the heat of midsummer, a young woman named Takiko Odaka departs on foot for the hospital to give birth to a baby boy. Her pregnancy, the result of a brief affair with a married man, is a source of sorrow and shame to her abusive parents. For Takiko, however, it is a cause for reverie. Her baby, she imagines, will be hers and hers alone, a challenge that she also hopes will free her. Takiko’s first year as a mother is filled with the intense bodily pleasures and pains that come from caring for a newborn. At first she seeks refuge in the company of other women – in the hospital, in her son’s nursery – but as the baby grows, her life becomes less circumscribed as she explores Tokyo, even ventures beyond the city into the countryside, toward a mountain that captures her imagination and desire for a wilder freedom.

Title:Β What You Are Looking For is in the Library
Author:Β Michiko Aoyama
Translator (from Japanese): Alison Watts
Publisher:Β Hanover Square Press
Publishing Date:Β 2023 (2020)
No. of Pages:Β 300

Synopsis:Β What are you looking for?

So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it.

A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose.

In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book will you recommend?

Title:Β Home is the Sailor
Author:Β Jorge Amado
Translator (from Portuguese):Β Harriet De Onis
Publisher:Β Collins Harvill
Publishing Date:Β 1990 (1961)
No. of Pages:Β 298

Synopsis:Β The sleepy Brazilian beach resort of Periperi needs a hero. As if in answer to their call, Captain Vasco Moscosco de AragΓ£o (newly retired) arrives and soon has the townspeople enthralled with his tales of ocean-going daring and romance. Only his rival, Chico Pacheco, delves into the captain’s past and discovers that he has never in his life sailed beyond the harbour bar. But just as Vasco is about to be unmasked, the Ita limps into port with her flag at half mast and her captain dead at the wheel. Pressed into service, Vasco goes to meet his destiny and so begins an adventure in love and seamanship that surpasses even his wildest fantasies.

Title:Β The Kindness of Enemies
Author:Β Leila Aboulela
Publisher:Β Grove Press
Publishing Date:Β 2015
No. of Pages:Β 335

Synopsis:Β A riveting epic of love, betrayal, and war from New York Times Notable author and winner of the first ever Caine Prize for African Writing, Leila Baoulela.

It’s 2010 and Natasha, a half-Russian, half-Sudanese professor of history, is researching the life of Imam Shamil, the nineteenth century Muslim leader who led the anti-Russian resistance in the Caucasian War. When shy, single Natasha discovers that her star student, Osama (Oz), is not only descended from the warrior but also possesses Shamil’s legendary sword, the Imam’s story comes vividly to life. As Natasha’s relationship with Oz and his alluring actress mother intensifies, Natasha is forced to confront issues she had long tried to avoid – that of her Muslim heritage. When Oz is suddenly arrested at his home one morning, Natasha realizes that everything she values stands in jeopardy.

Told with Aboulela’s inimitable elegance and narrated from the point of view of both Natasha and the historical characters she is researching, The Kindness of Enemies is both an engrossing story of a provocative period in history and an important examination of what it is to be a Muslim in a post-9/11 world.

Title:Β The Family
Author:Β Buchi Emecheta
Publisher:Β George Braziller
Publishing Date:Β 1990 (1989)
No. of Pages:Β 239

Synopsis:Β Born into poverty in Jamaica, deserted when her parents emigrate, and raped by an “uncle” at age nine, Gwendolen Brillianton is happy to be summoned to London to care for the siblings she has never met – but being reunited with her family does not solve her problems, or theirs. Not until she has again been the victim of rape and has left home does Gwendolen begin to understand that she must take control of her own life. Widely known and respected for her stories of black women struggling with the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity, Buchi Emecheta hs written a painfully engrossing tale of bravery in the face of familial disintegration.

Title:Β Arthur & George
Author:Β Julian Barnes
Publisher:Β Jonathan Cape
Publishing Date:Β 2005
No. of Pages:Β 357

Synopsis:Β Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late-nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, while George remains in hard-working obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages.

With a mixture of intense research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings to life not just this long-forgotten case, but the inner workings of these two very different men. This is a novel in which the events of a hundred years ago constantly set off contemporary echoes, a novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race. Most of all it is a profound and moving meditation on the fateful differences between what we believe, what we know and what we can prove.

Julian Barnes has long been recognised as one of Britain’s most remarkable writers. While those already familiar with his work will enjoy its originality, its wit, its wisdom about the human condition, Arthur & George will surely find him an entirely new audience.

Title:Β The Night Watch
Author:Β Sarah Waters
Publisher:Β Riverhead Books
Publishing Date:Β 2006
No. of Pages:Β 446

Synopsis:Β Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of four Londoners – three women and a young man with a past – whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in sometimes surprising ways. In wartime London, the women work – as ambulance drivers, ministry clerks, and building inspectors. There are feats of heroism, epic and quotidian, and tragedies both enormous and personal, but it is the emotional inner lives of her characters that Sarah Waters captures with absolute truth and intimacy.

Waters describes with perfect knowingness the taut composure of a rescue worker in the aftermath of a bombing, the idle longing of a young woman for her soldier lover, the peculiar thrill of a convict watching the sky ignite through the bars on his window, the hunger of a woman prowling the streets for an encounter, and the panic of another who sees her love affair coming to an end. .At the same time, Waters is in absolute control of a narrative that offers up stunning surprises and exquisite turns, even as it depicts the impact of grand historical events on individual lies.

Tender, tragic, and beautifully poignant, The Night Watch is a towering achievement and confirms its author as “one of the best storytellers alive today” (The Independent on Sunday)