These stories from Asian authors offer something real, something human—and they stay with you.
A quiet bookshop in Tokyo. A strange dystopian world shaped by media. A woman who stops eating meat and unravels everything around her. These stories from Asian authors offer something real, something human— and they stay with you. If you’re looking for books that feel honest, thoughtful, and powerful, start here.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa (Japan, translated by Eric Ozawa)
This short novel is set in Jimbocho, Tokyo’s famous book district. It follows Takako, a woman who moves in with her uncle after a breakup. She helps him run his small secondhand bookstore and slowly begins to heal through books, quiet moments, and unlikely friendships.
There’s a calm, simple charm in this book. Like many Japanese novels, it made me feel peaceful. I liked the setting and how it captured the love people have for bookstores. I love books about bookstores. The calm, the quiet, and the satisfying feeling of reading about something you really love. This one reminded me that bookstores feel like home, wherever you are.
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Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum (Korea, translated by Shanna Tan)
This one feels like a warm blanket. Yeonju leaves her stressful job and opens a small bookshop in Seoul. She doesn’t know what she’s doing at first, but slowly, with help from people around her, she finds a new rhythm.
Reading this felt like being inside the shop. Calm, cozy, filled with good coffee and kind people. The characters felt real, and I saw parts of myself in Yeonju. It’s not a big or dramatic story, but it’s honest. If you’ve ever wanted to run away and start over somewhere quiet, this book gets it.
Snowglobe by Soyoung Park (Korea, translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort)
In this story, some people live in a perfect, fake world called Snowglobe, and the rest of society watches them like a reality show. And then, one girl starts to question what’s real.
As someone who works in media, this book made me pause. It asks hard questions about how we turn real lives into content. It’s sharp and unsettling in ways that hit close to home. If you’ve ever felt uneasy about how much we consume online, you’ll feel this one.
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Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Japan, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot)
There’s a small café in Tokyo where you can travel back in time. But there are rules, like you can’t change anything, and you have to come back before the coffee gets cold.
The idea sounds dreamy, but the stories inside are grounded. People go back not to fix things, but to understand. To say what they couldn’t before. It’s short and simple, but the emotion is deep. This one warmed my heart. It made me think about time, memory, and how we deal with loss.
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The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Korea, translated by Deborah Smith)
Yeong-hye stops eating meat after a strange dream. Her choice sends her life—and her family—into chaos. The story is told not by her, but by the people around her: her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister.
This one left me a little speechless. It’s strange and haunting, full of silence and tension. It made me stop more than once just to take in what I read. You don’t get a clear answer, but that’s the point. It’s about control, family, desire, and resistance. If you’re ready for something that doesn’t follow the usual path, this is the book.
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