The latest and always excellent issue of Japan Book News is online and worth checking out for their detailed English summaries of recent books.

It covers a lot of the major fiction releases we’ve looked at here, including Isaka Kotaro’s PK, Wataya Risa’s Oe Prize winning かわいそうだね, and  Tanaka Shin’ya’s Akutagawa winning 共食い. Other books of interest include a history of Japan during the Cold War and an illustrated encyclopedia of clothing from the Edo era.

Also included is a nice overview of an event in Tokyo that featured Kawakami Hiromi talking about her work and issues of translation, as well as the Salon du Livre in Paris that included many Japanese authors, most notably Nobel Prize Winner Oe Kenzaburo. Certainly worth checking out.