Days at the Morisaki Bookshop Satoshi Yagisawa translated from the Japanese by Eric Ozawa (2010/2023) In contemporary Tokyo, Takako is a 25-year-old whose boyfriend announces, out of the blue, that he’s marrying someone else. Since the (ex)-boyfriend and his new fiancée both also work at Takako’s office, she can’t bear to see them and resigns. Her uncle, somewhat estranged from the family, invites Takako to live in a room above his second-hand bookshop, offering her room and board in exchange for some part-time help. And so begins Takako’s introduction to the world of books, especially fiction. She becomes entangled both in literature and in the lives of her uncle, his customers, and the patrons of a nearby coffee shop. This sweet story is set mostly in the Jinbōchō area of Tokyo, which has the largest concentration of book stores in the world. Read it in one sitting and feel better about the world. (The sequel, More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop [2011/2024], picks up the characters a few years later. It’s more discursive and less plot-driven.)
The Café with No Name Robert Seethaler translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire (2023/2025) This unusual little novel gives readers a snapshot of working-class life in Vienna in the 1960s and 1970s. The main character is Robert Simon, a loner who does odd jobs around the city until he has the chance to open a small café. (His establishment is not a coffee shop but rather a sort of pub, selling beer, wine, soft drinks, pickles, and “bread with drippings.”) The patrons who pass through all have stories of their own, connecting them in different ways to the café and to its kindly proprietor. They are a varied lot: factory workers, market vendors, a wrestler, elderly retirees. Don’t expect an overarching plot—just enjoy the characters, who are portrayed with sensitivity and a sense of humor. And always in the background is Vienna, still recovering from World War II, but nonetheless that magical city on the Danube.