Books like Kokoro
A student in Meiji-era Tokyo befriends a withdrawn older man he calls Sensei, whose long final letter reveals the betrayal that hollowed out his life.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Kokoro
Snow Country
A Tokyo dilettante travels to a hot-spring town in snow country to visit his geisha lover, and the cold landscape mirrors the impossibility of their connection.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
A man haunted by the unexplained abandonment of four close friends makes a pilgrimage to understand what broke them apart.
Thousand Cranes
At a tea ceremony held by his late father's mistress, Kikuji is offered a bride, and begins an affair with another of his father's former lovers, Mrs Ota.
An Artist of the Floating World
In the years after World War II, a once-celebrated Japanese painter tries to arrange his daughter's marriage while slowly facing the propaganda he made for the imperial cause.
The Sense of an Ending
Tony Webster, retired and settled, receives a solicitor's letter about a small bequest from the mother of his university girlfriend, and it forces him to revisit his friendship with Adrian, the brilliant schoolfriend whose story he thought he understood.
The Door
A Hungarian writer hires a fiercely private old housekeeper who never lets anyone through her front door, and their decades-long bond turns into love, dependence, and betrayal.
Hear the Wind Sing
Murakami's debut: in the summer of 1970, a college student home on break drinks beer with his friend the Rat at J's Bar, meets a girl with nine fingers and listens to the radio, learning how to be alone.
Heaven
Two 14-year-olds in a Tokyo school, both targets of relentless bullying, find each other and argue about whether suffering has meaning.
Embers
Two old friends meet after 41 years to confront betrayal, love, and a night that ended everything.
Gertrude
Kuhn, a composer lamed by a sledding accident in his youth, tells of his friendship with the wild opera singer Muoth and their love for the same woman, Gertrude.
The Makioka Sisters
Four Osaka sisters of a declining merchant family try across the late 1930s to marry off the third, as the culture they came from is about to be burned off the map.
Beware of Pity
A young Austro-Hungarian lieutenant's thoughtless kindness to a paralysed girl entangles him in an impossible engagement on the eve of the First World War.