Books like The Lake
Gimpei Momoi, a former teacher who lost his job after an affair with a pupil, can't stop following women he sees in the street, and his memories drift back to a lake of his childhood.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of The Lake
The House of Sleeping Beauties
Old Eguchi visits a secret seaside inn where elderly men pay to spend the night beside young women drugged into a deep sleep, and each night brings back memories of his life.
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Seventy very short stories Kawabata wrote across his life, few longer than two pages, of chance meetings, love, death and the turning seasons.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
A young monk becomes so obsessed with the beauty of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto that he decides to destroy it.
The Box Man
A nameless man cuts a window in a cardboard box, puts it over his head and begins to live inside it, writing the notebook the reader holds.
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
A gang of boys worship a sailor for embodying the heroic ideal, but when the sailor softens into domesticity, they decide he must be punished.
The Blind Owl
An opium-addicted painter of pen-case lids, alone in his room, writes for his shadow about a woman he glimpsed through a hole in the wall, and what followed.
Enduring Love
A man witnesses a balloon accident that kills a stranger, and the encounter triggers a stalker's obsessive love that he cannot prove or escape.
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.
A Pale View of Hills
A Japanese woman living in England recalls her life in postwar Nagasaki, and the gaps in her story conceal a truth she cannot bear to face.
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Twenty-four stories from across his career, among them a waitress granted one wish on her twentieth birthday and a monkey in Shinagawa that steals people's names.
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness
Four novellas, among them the title story of a very fat man who devotes himself to his brain-damaged son, and The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away.
Mysteries
Johan Nagel, a stranger in a yellow suit, steps off a steamer into a small Norwegian coastal town one summer and unsettles everyone with his lies, gifts and provocations.