Liars of the Hidden Gods

I haven't read this yet and just saw the review. The third volume in the English translation, Lairs of the Hidden Gods, Volume 3: Straight to Darkness, has been released.

The New York Times has a favorable review here. An excerpt:

A well-produced and elegant little book, "Seven Touches" is a set of stories in which music plays a transformative, often mystical role in the lives of the characters: an organ grinder's abrasive melodies cause a woman to see visions of others' deaths; an antique music box summons up ghosts in the apartment of an old widower.

Haruki Murakami's latest work, After Dark

An English translation of Haruki Murakami's latest work, After Dark, was released this month. The work was originally published in 2004.

The book has not been widely reviewed but the initial reports indicate it's a departure from his other works. I'll get a copy this weekend and post my review.

Here are two reviews that I enjoyed.

Lee Makela, associate professor emeritus of East Asian history at Cleveland State University, has written a review for the Cleveland Plain Dealer: " ... we learn a lot, not only about Tokyo's denizens of the night, but about the larger metaphysical world each inhabits ..."

Sanaphay Rattanavong, writing for the Asian American Press, describes Murakami's style before examining the work. The author, "writes the way he speaks, spinning what he calls “a ‘neutral’ Japanese.” In Murakami’s most recent novel, After Dark (Knopf, 2007, trans. Jay Rubin), this neutrality is taken to an extreme."

New books and plans

Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US, by Roland Kelts. A review in The Australian.

Grotesqueby Natsuo Kirino. I just bought this one. A New York Times review.   

In other activites, I plan to join the Japan-America Society in Washington DC. I live near it and I will enroll in its language school. I'm very excited about this. This blog will help focus me on something that I have had a lifelong interest in, Japanese writers and writing, especially its post-war fiction, ever since being exposed to some translations of Japanese books on Guam, while in the Navy, that weren't widely available in the U.S. (The is pre-Internet, before you could order anything you ever wanted online.) My list of links, writers and otherwise, isn't very long yet but my goal is to build this out gradually. Rushed enthusiasm dissipates quickly. 

Korea is a big market for Japanese fiction

Japanese fiction is popular in Korea, according to a report in e.Snchew-i.com, a Malaysian daily newspaper. Japanese books have 31% of the Korean fiction market. Moreover, of the 4,300 translated titles published last year in Korea, 42% were translations from Japanese to Korean. 


I wonder how much of that is a fluke of the local market, or part of a growing interest in Japanese writers?  


By the way, Haruki Murakami's Web site has been nominated for a Webby Award. It is a very good site that opens with this pulsating, deep bass, theme that sets the mood. The site has very interesting graphics, photography.