There is no doubt that Japanese literature has been one of the outstanding successes for British bookshops in recent years: almost half of the best-selling translated fiction titles in 2024 were from Japan. Most Japanese fiction translated into English fits into broad categories – cats, crime, coffee shops – but one surprising bestseller stands alone.
Soledad Acosta de Samper spoke English, traveled the world, wrote every day, and saved the newspaper clippings in which her novels appeared to transform them into albums. She married out of love, had four daughters – one of them, a nun and a poet, published an edition of Novena de Aguinaldos It is sung during
AT33, French author Edouard Louis has already seen all seven of his slim novels translated into English. In his breakout debut, The End of Eddy (2017), and then in Change (2024), he wrote about the bullied gay son of a promising kid from a poor family who becomes a bestselling author. Several of his other