Ten top 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:

number9dream by David Mitchell

For me, this is the best and most electrifying depiction of Tokyo by a non-Japanese writer. It follows the quest of Eiji Miyake, coming from the rural island of Yakushima in order to find the father he has never met. Mitchell depicts Tokyo as an exciting, sprawling city, replete with neon and yakuza.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue