"There is a blessed pack of books available in English from Japanese translation. The struggle was really about digging through the lists and the classics, to decide the best selection to share with all of you. Japanese is one of the languages that has been most blessed by translators — still not nearly enough, but a blessing nonetheless.
It's a dream, and it means I've been careful to leave off the more obvious or mainstream books from this list. Don't get me wrong, you should read the much-lauded novels by Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami. But I wanted to really prioritize highlighting contemporaries or classics that casual readers might not know off the top of their heads.
You might still recognize the books on my list, but I made sure that there are a good number of new or lesser known books here, so that those who have already dug into Japanese literature will still find a few surprises. So here are 14 must-read books available in English translation: some new, some old."
