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Siamese fighting fish, cockroaches, cats, a snake, and a strange fungus all serve here as mirrors that reflect the unconfessable aspects of human nature buried within us. The traits and fates of these animals illuminate such deeply natural, human experiences as the cruelty born of cohabitation, the desire to reproduce and the impulse not to, and the inexplicable connection that can bind, eerily, two beings together. Each Nettel tale creates, with tightly wound narrative tension, a space wherein her characters feel excruciatingly human, exploring how the wounds we incur in life manifest themselves within us, clandestinely, irrevocably, both unseen and overtly. In a precise writing style that is both subtle and spellbinding, Nettel renders the ordinary unsettling, and the grotesque exquisite. Natural Histories is the winner of the 3rd Ribera del Duero International Award for Short Narratives, an important Spanish literature prize. From the Hardcover edition.

Gives an account of how Despentes became notorious: reviled and admired in equal measure for her rape-revenge novel turned film, "Baise-Moi", she is the poster girl for modern female rebellion. This book describes the ways her ideas have been shaped by her experiences of rape, prostitution and working in the porn industry.

In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child.This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist, and ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies.In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.

Two brothers, Takashi and Mitsu, return from Tokyo to the village of their childhood. The selling of their family home leads them to an inescapable confrontation with their family history. Their attempt to escape the influence of the city ends in failure as they realize that its tentacles extend to everything in the countryside, including their own relationship. In 1994, Kenzaburo Oe was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Signalling out The Silent Cry, the Nobel Committee stated that his poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament.  Kenzaburo Oe is one of the great writers of the century and The Silent Cry is his masterpiece.

WINNER OF THE NORDIC LITERARY PRIZE AND NOMINATED FOR THE ICELANDIC LITERATURE PRIZEThe year is 1883. The stark Icelandic winter landscape is the backdrop. We follow the priest, Skugga-Baldur, on his hunt for the enigmatic blue fox. From there we’re then transported to the world of the naturalist Friðrik B. Friðriksson and his charge, Abba, who suffers from Down’s syndrome, and who came to his rescue when he was on the verge of disaster. Then to a shipwreck off the Icelandic coast in the spring of 1868.The fates of all these characters are intrinsically bound, and gradually, surprisingly, unravelled in this spellbinding fable that is part mystery, part fairy tale.Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic poet and novelist. His novels have been translated into twenty-five languages and include From the Mouth of the Whale and The Whispering Muse (both by Telegram). Sjón won the Nordic Council Literary Prize, the equivalent of the Man Booker Prize, for The Blue Fox and "Best Icelandic Novel" for The Whispering Muse in 2005. Also a songwriter, he has written lyrics for Björk, including for her eight studio album, Biophilia.

From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi--a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café--collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realizes he's created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive--first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path. A prizewinning novel by "Baghdad's new literary star" (The New York Times), Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humor the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.

“Every once in a while a novel does not record reality but creates a whole new reality, one that casts a light on our darkest feelings. Kafka did that. Bruno Schulz did that. Now the Spanish writer Andrés Barba has done it with the terrifying Such Small Hands.”—Edmund WhiteIt was once a happy city; we were once happy girls. . . . Life changes at the orphanage the day Marina shows up. As she tries to find her place, she creates a game whose rules are dictated by a haunting violence. In hypnotic, lyrical prose, Andrés Barba evokes the pain of loss and the hunger for acceptance—a masterwork from the Spanish writer at the peak of his powers.

In 1945, Akiyuki Nosaka watched the Allied firebombing of Kobe kill his adoptive parents, and then witnessed his sister starving to death. The shocking and blisteringly memorable stories of The Cake Tree in the Ruins are based on his own experiences as a child in Japan during the Second World War.They are stories of a lonely whale searching the oceans for a mate, who sacrifices himself for love; of a mother desperately trying to save her son with her tears; of a huge, magnificent tree which grows amid the ruins of a burnt-out town, its branches made from the sweetest cake imaginable.Profound, heartbreaking and aglow with a piercing beauty, they express the chaos and terror of conflict, yet also how love can illuminate even the darkest moment.

She f*cked a bear.She literally f*cked a bear.No. This isn't some euphemism for a beefy gay man. She motherf*cking literally f*cked a literal bear. \
  \
    What. The. Hell. \
  \
Okay. So. I'm not a cultured reader. I read mostly YA and...well...that's about it. BUT, I am a reader. \
  A layman reader.\
 So, here is the review from a casual just-for-fun reader:She f*cked a bear.For the record: did I pick up this book knowing there will be bear-f*ckery? No. I picked it because I wanted (for once) to read a novel. I wanted one of those fancy English-students-read-this sort of novels. I found this 120ish page book on the "suggested reads" table of my local library. Here's the blurb from the back:  Marian Engel, one of Canada's most celebrated and provocative novelest, died...The short and controversal novel "Bear," her last and best-known work... It \
  sounded\
 good - it had all the hallmarks for cultured reading, right? It won prizes, it's by a treasured national author, it was controversial. I was pumped - watch out world, I'm gonna get cultured.The book started off okay. It's a bit pretentious  but it was manageable. There's an isolated, island house donated to a historical society and it's filled with old books. \
  For once, instead of Sunday school attendance certificates, old emigration documents, envelopes of unidentified farmer's Sunday photographs and withered love letters, something of read value had been left to them.\
A librarian (Lou) is sent there for the summer to categorize and catalog the collection. There's an old bear chained up that was the family pet that our Lou needs to care for. At this point, the book wasn't too bad. It wasn't particularly gripping but hey. Not bad. Then we get to the "First Look": \
  As she sat down, she realized the bear was standing in his doorway staring at her.Bear. There. Staring.She stared back.\
 Again, not bad. She starts to befriend the bear, bringing him food, petting his fur, giving him anthropomorphic characteristics....essentially all the things that even a five year old knows NOT to do with a wild animal.At one point Lou walks the bear on his chain to the island's edge and as the bear swims, she jumps in naked.  Yes, it was a bit odd - it was odd that she thinks of the bear with so many human emotions, that she goes skinny-dipping with him, that she notices his very "male-ness" when she first meets him....but I maintain that at this point, there wasn't any indication that things were going to go so far south. I remember thinking, "Oh jeez. That's those fancy-novels. Free spirits. Wouldn't it be funny if..."Turns out, that was not funny. To summarize the rest of the book: (And note, I'm summarizing this in the blandest way possible but I'm still putting it as a spoiler - so you have been warned):(view spoiler)[ She lets the bear start to roam her house. He visits her at night. She initiates, luring him to certain areas of her body with sweet smells.There are many couplings (oral). She goes on long walks (dates?) with the bear. There's menstruation involved at one of their "couplings." It was a huge turn-on for the bear.She tries to initiate further via stimulation and guiding him...but learns that there's mechanical differences between the two species.  (hide spoiler)]

A bestseller in France and winner of Japan’s Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, The Guest Cat, by the acclaimed poet Takashi Hiraide, is a subtly moving and exceptionally beautiful novel about the transient nature of life and idiosyncratic but deeply felt ways of living. A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copy-editing; they no longer have very much to say to one another. But one day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. It leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. Soon they are buying treats for the cat and enjoying talks about the animal and all its little ways. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife — the days have more light and color. The novel brims with new small joys and many moments of staggering poetic beauty, but then something happens….As Kenzaburo Oe has remarked, Takashi Hiraide’s work "really shines." His poetry, which is remarkably cross-hatched with beauty, has been acclaimed here for "its seemingly endless string of shape-shifting objects and experiences,whose splintering effect is enacted via a unique combination of speed and minutiae."

Banana Yoshimoto's novels have made her a sensation in Japan and all over the world, and Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, is an enchantingly original and deeply affecting book about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine of Kitchen, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, she is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who was once his father), Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale that recalls early Marguerite Duras. Kitchen and its companion story, "Moonlight Shadow," are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul.

Natsuki isn't like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what. Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?

Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.

Translated by Elisabeth JaquetteMinor Detail revolves around a brutal crime committed one year after the War of 1948, which Palestinians mourn as the Nakba, the catastrophe that led to the displacement, exile, and refugeedom of more than 700,000 people, and which Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence.Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah reads about this ‘minor detail’ in a larger context, and becomes fascinated by it to the point of obsession.In this compelling novel, Shibli’s haunting prose is a form of resistance in itself.

In this witty and exuberant collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales, humans live side by side with spirits who provide a variety of useful services--from truth-telling to babysitting, from protecting castles to fighting crime.A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable lanterns; a cheerful lover who visits every night to take a luxurious bath; a silent house-caller who babysits and cleans while a single mother is out working. Where the Wild Ladies Are is populated by these and many other spirited women--who also happen to be ghosts. This is a realm in which jealousy, stubbornness, and other excessive "feminine" passions are not to be feared or suppressed, but rather cultivated; and, chances are, a man named Mr. Tei will notice your talents and recruit you, dead or alive (preferably dead), to join his mysterious company.In this witty and exuberant collection of linked stories, Aoko Matsuda takes the rich, millenia-old tradition of Japanese folktales--shapeshifting wives and foxes, magical trees and wells--and wholly reinvents them, presenting a world in which humans are consoled, guided, challenged, and transformed by the only sometimes visible forces that surround them.

Winner of the Akutagawa Prize, The Hole is by turns reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, David Lynch, and My Neighbor Totoro, but is singularly unsettling.Asa’s husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family’s home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time.       One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole—a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.

Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste.But everything is about to change.Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape and Tokue's dark secret is revealed, with devastating consequences.Sweet Bean Paste is a moving novel about the burden of the past and the redemptive power of friendship. Translated into English for the first time, Durian Sukegawa's beautiful prose is capturing hearts all over the world.

Kawakami, who exploded into the cultural space first as a musician, then as a poet and popular blogger, and most importantly as a best-selling novelist, challenges every preconception about storytelling and prose style. She is currently one of Japan’s most widely read and critically acclaimed authors, heralded by Haruki Murakami as his favorite young writer.An earlier novella published in Japan with the same title focused on the female body, telling the story of three women: the thirty-year-old unmarried narrator, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter Midoriko. Unable to come to terms with her changed body after giving birth, Makiko becomes obsessed with the prospect of getting breast enhancement surgery. Meanwhile, her twelve-year-old daughter Midoriko is paralyzed by the fear of her oncoming puberty and finds herself unable to voice the vague, yet overwhelming anxieties associated with growing up. The narrator, who remains unnamed for most of the story, struggles with her own indeterminable identity of being neither a “daughter” nor a “mother.” Set over three stiflingly hot days in Tokyo, the book tells of a reunion of sorts, between two sisters, and the passage into womanhood of young Midoriko.In this greatly expanded version, a second chapter in the story of the same women opens on another hot summer’s day ten years later. The narrator, single and childless, having reconciled herself with the idea of never marrying, nonetheless feels increasing anxiety about growing old alone and about never being a mother. In episodes that are as comical as they are revealing of deep yearning, she seeks direction from other women in her life—her mother, her grandmother, friends, as well as her sister—and only after dramatic and frequent changes of heart, decides in favor of artificial insemination. But this decision in a deeply conservative country in which women’s reproductive rights are under constant threat is not one that can be acted upon without great drama.Breasts and Eggs takes as its broader subjects the ongoing repression of women in Japan and the possibility of liberation, poverty, domestic violence, and reproductive ethics. Mixing comedy and realism, it is an epic life-affirming journey about finding inner strength and peace.

The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada—one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan.In an unnamed Japanese city, three seemingly normal and unrelated characters find work at a sprawling industrial factory. They each focus intently on their specific jobs: one studies moss, one shreds paper, and the other proofreads incomprehensible documents. Life in the factory has its own logic and momentum, and, eventually, the factory slowly expands and begins to take over everything, enveloping these poor workers. The very margins of reality seem to be dissolving: all forms of life capriciously evolve, strange creatures begin to appear… After a while—it could be weeks or years—the workers don’t even have the ability to ask themselves: where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin?Told in three alternating first-person narratives, The Factory casts a vivid—if sometimes surreal—portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of modern life. With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, Hiroko Oyamada is one of the boldest writers of her generation.

Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Emperor, Kazu’s life is tied by a series of coincidences to Japan’s Imperial family and to one particular spot in Tokyo; the park near Ueno Station – the same place his unquiet spirit now haunts in death. It is here that Kazu’s life in Tokyo began, as a labourer in the run up to the 1964 Olympics, and later where he ended his days, living in the park’s vast homeless ‘villages’, traumatised by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and enraged by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics.Akutagawa-award-winning author Yū Miri uses her outsider’s perspective as a Zainichi (Korean-Japanese) writer to craft a novel of utmost importance to this moment, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive, deeply felt depiction of the lives of Japan’s most vulnerable people.

<p>Holy Spider is a 2022 Persian-language crime thriller film directed by Ali Abbasi, starring Mehdi Bajestani and Zar Amir Ebrahimi. Based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei, a serial killer who targeted street prostitutes and killed 16 women from 2000 to 2001 in Mashhad, Iran, the film depicts a fictional female journalist investigating a serial killer.</p>

Into the world of the Emperor Penguins, who find their soul mates through song, a penguin is born who cannot sing. But he can tap dance something fierce!

2006 animated film directed by George Miller

An eight-year-old boy genius and his friends must rescue their parents after the adults are abducted by aliens.

2001 animated film directed by John A. Davis

In a robot world, a young idealistic inventor travels to the big city to join his inspiration's company, only to find himself opposing its sinister new management.

The story revolves around sub-zero heroes: a woolly mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger, a sloth and a prehistoric combination of a squirrel and rat, known as Scrat.

An orphan who lives with his two cruel aunts befriends anthropomorphic bugs who live inside a giant peach, and they embark on a journey to New York City.

1996 animated film directed by Henry Selick

A young boy befriends a giant robot from outer space that a paranoid government agent wants to destroy.

An orphan boy and his magical dragon come to town with his abusive adoptive parents in pursuit.

To save her father from death in the army, a young maiden secretly goes in his place and becomes one of China's greatest heroines in the process.

1998 American animated musical action-comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation

An English soldier and the daughter of an Algonquin chief share a romance when English colonists invade seventeenth century Virginia.

Wendy and her brothers are whisked away to the magical world of Neverland with the hero of their stories, Peter Pan.

1953 animated fantasy-adventure film by Disney

A deformed bell-ringer must assert his independence from a vicious government minister in order to help his friend, a gypsy dancer.

A young linguist named Milo Thatch joins an intrepid group of explorers to find the mysterious lost continent of Atlantis.

2001 American animated science-fantasy action-adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation

A kindhearted street urchin and a power-hungry Grand Vizier vie for a magic lamp that has the power to make their deepest wishes come true.

1992 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation

The babies gets lost in the forest after Tommy Pickles (Elizabeth Daily) gets a new baby brother.

Pippi is a little girl who lives alone in her house, while her father is sailing the seas. With Pippi we meet her horse, her monkey and her two friends Tommy and Anika. Together they go on many journeys through the neighborhood.

1997 animated musical film directed by Clive A. Smith

Alice stumbles into the world of Wonderland. Will she get home? Not if the Queen of Hearts has her way.

1951 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions

An adventurous girl, a young blind hermit, and a goofy two-headed dragon race to find the lost sword Excalibur to save King Arthur and Camelot from disaster.

Basil, the rodent Sherlock Holmes, investigates the kidnapping of a toy maker and uncovers its link to his archenemy, Professor Ratigan.

1986 American animated mystery film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation

With the help of a smooth talking tomcat, a family of Parisian felines set to inherit a fortune from their owner try to make it back home after a jealous butler kidnaps them and leaves them in the country.

1970 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Wolfgang Reitherman

American musician, singer, songwriter, producer, author, and animal rights activist

Count D, a quite interesting pet shop owner from an area called Chinatown, sells rare and hard to come by pets to people longing for something special, but with each sale comes a contract. If the rules of the contract are followed, e

Three-part mini-series set during three different eras in a single room of an odd hotel where employees never age. Every story has a slight twist to it, but the stories are mostly dialogue-heavy psychological or relationship dramas.

Two brothers search for a Philosopher's Stone after an attempt to revive their deceased mother goes awry and leaves them in damaged physical forms.

A girl and her robot companion search for her mother, who's lost within a vast chasm.

In an era where aliens have invaded and taken over feudal Tokyo, an unemployed samurai finds work however he can.

A psychic middle school boy tries to live a normal life and keep his growing powers under control, even though he constantly gets into trouble.

A group of people are resurrected from their deaths by a mysterious black ball called GANTZ to combat alien criminals hiding on Earth.

In a sad town a clan of sorcerers use its people to experiment with the dark arts.

High school student Ichigo Kurosaki, who has the ability to see ghosts, gains soul reaper powers from Rukia Kuchiki and sets out to save the world from "Hollows".

Follows two friends, daughters of exorcists, who are now members of the government's secret Supernatural Disaster Countermeasures Division that fights demons when they appear in Japan.

A squad of prisoners and their guards are sent to investigate a mysterious island. They get stranded there and must rely on each other to survive the island's mysterious and monstrous residents.

After finding his mom killed, Satoru's time-traveling ability takes him back 18 years for a chance to prevent her death and those of three classmates.

17-year-old Shinichi Izumi is partially infected by a Parasyte; monsters that butcher and consume humans. He must learn to co-exist with the creature if he is to survive both the life of a Parasyte and human, as part monster, part pe

In the 21st century, where the existence of humanoid animals that have been living in the darkness for centuries have been revealed to the world. One day, Michiru, who was a normal high-school student, suddenly turns into a tanuki pe

A girl suddenly starts seeing monsters around her but nobody else can see them. Rather than trying to run away or face them, she instead musters all of her courage and ignores them. Join in on her day-to-day life as she keeps up her 

This surreal dramedy follows Satou Tatsuhiro as he attempts to escape the evil machinations of the NHK.

Fuu, a waitress who works in a teahouse, rescues two master swordsmen, Mugen and Jin, from their execution to help her find the "samurai who smells of sunflowers."

When someone wants revenge, they post about it on a special website at midnight. Then Hell Girl appears to do their bidding.

In a post-apocalyptic future humans live in peace with androids in a domed city. However, a strange series of murders has intruded into bored inspector Re-l Mayer's life.

In a post-apocalyptic world set a thousand years after our era, the remaining humans, now with telekinesis, live in a seemingly peaceful society, but dark secrets of the past will soon be discovered by a small group of friends.

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