Saraba, Moscow Gurentai marked Hiroyuki Itsuki's emergence as a novelist. Set against jazz and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it vividly portrays youthful exhilaration, disillusionment, and longing for the wider world.

Jazz and the lure of Moscow illuminate youthful heat and disappointment.

Oba Hanshoki is an early award-winning work by Izumi Fujimoto, already suggesting her later interest in folk and regional materials. It draws on tangled relationships and local atmosphere to explore the forces inside a community.

A work that places communal ties and human entanglement within a folk-inflected atmosphere.