Eight Japanese novels in translation to explore

Reading fiction in translation is a chance to encounter particular writers, not a single national style. These eight Japanese novels differ in period, form, atmosphere and the lives they attend to. Some follow an individual through an unfamiliar situation; others concentrate on a family or a group of people under pressure. The range is the point: a strange encounter, an ordinary workplace and a marriage negotiation can each open a very different fictional world.

We have included both quieter narratives and books with serious violence or disturbing material, so choose by premise rather than assuming every title offers the same kind of reflection. Translation also involves a particular edition and a particular translator. If language and style are what draw you to a book, look at the edition details and read a sample. That can be more useful than expecting one writer's voice to stand for all the others.

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Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami follows a teenage runaway and an older man with unusual abilities through narratives that move between ordinary experience and the inexplicable. Music, memory and questions of identity help give the novel its atmosphere, but not everything settles into a single clear explanation. Choose this if you enjoy a substantial, dreamlike reading experience and are comfortable with ambiguity; it also contains sexual and violent material that makes the youthful protagonist an unreliable guide to audience suitability.