A fisherman's daughter in 1930s Japan rises to become a famous geisha. After training, Sayuri's virginity is sold to the highest bidder, then the school finds her a general for a patron. When he dies, she is reunited with the only man she loved.

A middle-aged Japanese woman, now living in England, relives her horrifying childhood memories of the bombing of Nagasaki.

"Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura's prearranged marriage to the son of her father's business associate would secure her family's status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man--an American sailor, a gaijin--and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family. When it's learned Naoko carries the sailor's child, she's cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences...

"Hiromi Kawakami tells the story of an enigmatic man through the voices of ten remarkable women who have known him. Each woman has succumbed, even if only for an hour, to the seductive, imprudent, and furtively feline man who drifted so naturally into their lives. Still clinging to the vivid memory of his warm breath and his indecipherable silences, ten women tell their stories as they attempt to recreate the image of the unfathomable Nishino."--Publisher...

During World War II the Japanese forced 200,000 young Korean women to be sex slaves or "comfort women" for their soldiers. This is one woman's riveting story of strength, courage and promises kept.

"Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength...

With the publication of Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, the literary world realized that Yoshimoto was a young writer of enduring talent whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of contemporary Japanese literature. Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young...

In the year 1311, in the highest tower of Cloud of Sparrows Castle, a beautiful woman sits by the window, watching as enemies gather below. As she calmly awaits her fate, she begins to write, carefully setting down on a scroll an extraordinary tale - a tale that unfolds in Autumn Bridge. With the same emotional power that distinguished Cloud of Sparrows, readers will travel from the storm-tossed shores of medieval Japan to the bustling streets of...

"A bestselling, prizewinning novel of obsession and psychological intrigue about two enigmatic unmarried women, one of whom manipulates the other from afar, by one of Japan's most acclaimed young writers"--