The Nakano Thrift Shop

Among the jumble of paperweights plates typewriters and general bric-a-brac in Mr Nakanos thrift store there are treasures to be found. Each piece carries its own story of love and loss - or so it seems to Hitomi when she takes a job there working behind the till. Nor are her fellow employees any less curious or weatherworn than the items they sell. Theres the stores owner Mr Nakano an enigmatic ladies man with several ex-wives; Sakiko his sensuous unreadable lover; his sister Masayo an artist whose free-spirited creations mask hidden sorrows. And finally theres Hitomis fellow employee Takeo whose abrupt and taciturn manner Hitomi finds to her consternation increasingly disarming. A beguiling story of love found amid odds and ends The Nakano Thrift Shop is a heart-warming and utterly charming novel from one of Japans most celebrated contemporary novelists. About the Author Born in 1958 in Tokyo HIROMI KAWAKAMI is one of Japans most popular contemporary novelists. She is the recipient of the Pascal Short Story Prize for New Writers and the Akutagawa Prize. Her novelDrowning won both the Ito Sei Literature Award and Joryu Bungaku Sho (Women Writers Prize) in 2000. Her novelManazuru won the 2011 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize.Strange Weather in Tokyo(Sensei no kaban) won the Tanizaki prize in 2001 and was shortlisted for both the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.ALLISON MARKIN POWELL has been awarded grants from English PEN and the NEA and the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize forThe Ten Loves of Mr Nishino. Her translations include works by Osamu Dazai Fuminori Nakamura and Kanako Nishi. She was the guest editor for the first Japan issue ofWords Without Borders and she maintains the database Japanese Literature in English atwww.japaneseliteratureinenglish.com.