Yuko Tsushima, WILDCAT DOME (FSG, 2025)

“…An unsettled zone where nothing is made whole, and not even the dead can rest ... Tsushima writes in a fluid, ambiguous present tense that muddles the distance between past and present, self and other.”
-Robert Rubsam, The Atlantic

• “Yuko Tsushima, now in English translation, explores nuclear, and personal, nightmares” (AP News)

• “Into the Vortex” (Katie Kitamura for Harper’s Magazine)

• “WILDCAT DOME challenges Japan's historical narratives” (The Japan Times)

• “WILDCAT DOME: A superb literary mystery that leaves readers, like the protagonists, constantly guessing”
  (Kirkus Review)

• “Echoes in the Dome: A Review of Yuko Tsushima’s WILDCAT DOME” (Asymptote)

• “Memory Hole: On WILDCAT DOME” (Literary Review)

• “A Country Imperfectly Pulling Itself Together” (The Atlantic)

• “A Life in Orange: Absent Fathers and Nuclear Fears” (Times Literary Supplement)

• “From Hiroshima to Fukushima, Yuko Tsushima’s novel WILDCAT DOME is strangely riveting”
  (South China Morning Post)

• “Race Made Radioactive: How Yuko Tsushima Fused Multiracial Identity and Military Occupation”
  (Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda for LitHub)

• “Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda on the Act of Translating: In Conversation with Mitzi Rapkin” (First Draft Podcast, LitHub)

• “The Cold Stone” (Excerpt in Harper’s Magazine)

• “People Live Here: WILDCAT DOME and the Late Work of Tsushima Yuko” (The Culture We Deserve)

• “Most Anticipated Books of 2025” (LitHub)

• “The Best Book Covers of 2025” (BookRiot)

Yoko Tawada, EXOPHONY: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue
(New Directions, 2025)

“In EXOPHONY, Tawada is a travel writer of language itself. She is not chronicling cities, monument, or cuisines so much as excavating the codes and conventions—spoken and unspoken—that define the contours of linguistic belonging.”
-Rhoda Feng, Financial Times

• EXOPHONY: Review (World LIterature Today)

• EXOPHONY: A Playful Journey toward the Space between Languages (Kirkus Review)

• “Arukioyoida: Swimming Through Language” (New City Lit)

• “Yoko Tawada’s Quiet Radicalism” (Foreign Policy)

• “Beyond the Grasp of Translation: Yoko Tawada’s EXOPHONY” (ZYZZYVA)

• “EXOPHONY: Review” (Asian Review of Books)

• “EXOPHONY: Review” (Publisher’s Weekly)

• “EXOPHONY: Review” (The Wingback Workshop)

• “Briefly Noted” (The New Yorker)

• “Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda in conversation with Susan Bernofsky on EXOPHONY“ (Poets & Writers)
  
  

Natsuo Kirino, SWALLOWS (Knopf, 2025)

“A witty portrayal of surrogacy that confronts the injustices of class and gender imbalances in Japanese society…skillfully light in tone, a quality Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda captures in her translation…Kirino somersaults her way to a suspenseful conclusion in a dazzling and troubling page-turner.” —Catherine Taylor, Financial Times (UK)

• “SWALLOWS: Review” (Kirkus Review)

• SWALLOWS: Review” (Publisher’s Weekly)

• “Womb for Hire” (Financial Times)

• “Briefly Noted” (The New Yorker)

• “The Best Books of the Year so far” (The New Yorker)

• “SWALLOWS reveals the ugly, awkward thoughts we’re too ashamed to say” (The Washington Post)

• “SWALLOWS untangles the murky ethics of selling motherhood” (The Japan Times)

• “SWALLOWS: Review” (Asian Review of Books)

• “SWALLOWS: Review” (Readings)

• “Natsuo Kirino tackles ethics and morality in surrogacy tale” (The Straits Times)

• “Daily Fiction: SWALLOWS” (LitHub)
  
  

Ryunosuke Akutagawa, KAPPA (New Directions, 2023)

“Froggish, beaked, and roughly child-sized, [Kappa] are known as malevolent tricksters, luring children to their deaths in waterways. But Patient No. 23 is surprised to find Kappa society remarkably human…”
-Charlie Barton, ZYZZYVA

• “Down a Hole” (ZYZZYVA)

• “KAPPA: Review” (Asian Review of Books)

• “Enter the absurdity of Kappa Land” (Metropolis)

• “KAPPA: Review'“ (AudioFile)

• “Interview with Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda and Allison Markin Powell on Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s KAPPA”
  (Oxford Political Review)