Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan Volume 6

3.6/5 ( ratings)

“An astonishment, by turns playful and profound, that makes you wish it were a monthly.” —Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Monkey Business is full of deep, funny, wild, scary, fabulous, moving, surprising, brilliant work. There is no literary magazine, no magazine period, that I get more excited about reading.” —Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome

“I feel my brain being reconfigured every time I read Monkey Business. The Japanese sense of story is very different from the American or Western sense of story, and it always opens up possibilities for me.” —Matthew Sharpe, author of Jamestown

Since its first issue in 2011, Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan has showcased the best of contemporary Japanese literature. Monkey Business features the short fiction and poetry of writers such as Hideo Furukawa, Mina Ishikawa, Hiromi Ito, Mieko Kawakami, Sachiko Kishimoto, Hiromi Kawakami, Aoko Matsuda, and Yoko Ogawa; interviews and essays by writers such as Haruki Murakami; new translations of the work of earlier writers such as Rampo Edogawa, Kafu Nagai, and Soseki Natsume; and graphic stories by Satoshi Kitamura and the Brother and Sister Nishioka.

Issue 6 kicks off with Part 10 of “The Forbidden Diary”, the ongoing serialization of a fictional diary by Sachiko Kishimoto. Aoko Matsuda, one of Japan’s most promising young writers, graces the pages of Monkey once more with her short story "Love Isn't Easy When You're the National Anthem". American and British authors such as Kelly Link, Linh Dinh, and Jason Hrivnak join contemporary Japanese authors Hideo Furukawa, Tomoka Shibasaki, and Hiromi Kawakami; as well as new translations from classic Japanese novelists Soseki Natsume and Shin'ichi Hoshi. These and many more of the best contemporary voices of Japanese and American literature make up the lyrical and literary prose of this newest issue of Monkey Business.