Kanazawa and My Personal Novel Recs on Shepherd.com

Shepherd.com is a new website for readers and authors. I was asked to contribute a selection of favorite books under a theme of my choice, and I (naturally) went with “The Best Novels with Japanese Settings Not Named Tokyo or Kyoto.” As I prefer 20th-century classics from the Japanese canon, it’s probably no surprise that I picked the following:

1) TEMPLE OF WILD GEESE AND BAMBOO DOLLS OF ECHIZEN, by Tsutomu Minakami

2) SNOW COUNTRY, by Yasunari Kawabata

3) THE MAKIOKA SISTERS, by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki

4) THE WOMAN IN THE DUNES, by Kobo Abe

5) THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS, by Tan Twan Eng

To read my reasons for selecting these five novels, please visit my Shepherd page here:

https://shepherd.com/best-books/japanese-settings-not-named-tokyo-or-kyoto