Top ten books about Tokyo

Nick Bradley was born in Germany in 1982 and grew up in Bath. After graduating with a master’s degree in English literature, he went to Japan for “just one year” and returned to England ten years later to attend the Creative Writing MA at UEA, graduating in 2016.

He has worked in a variety of jobs, including: Japanese teacher, English teacher, video game translator, travel writer, and photographer. He speaks Japanese fluently, and recently completed a PhD funded by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation in Creative & Critical Writing at UEA, focusing on the figure of the cat in Japanese literature.

Bradley's new novel is The Cat and The City.

One of the author's ten favorite books about Tokyo, as shared at the Guardian:

The Little House by Kyoko Nakajima (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)

A fictionalised memoir, this novel is the diary of a former maid, Taki, who moves to Tokyo in 1930 to work for a rich family. Her narrative follows daily life working in the household of the Hirais, until the end of the second world war. Coincidentally, the book also contains references to the first cancelled Tokyo Olympics, originally scheduled for 1940 but abandoned because of the war. The quiet narrative style from the perspective of a maid, and the subjects it circles, have led many to compare the book to The Remains of the Day.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue