What You Are Looking For Is in the Library: a Novel

What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it.

A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose.

In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book will you recommend?

Michiko Aoyama was born in 1970 in Aichi Prefecture, Honshu, Japan. She is the author of the multi-million-copy bestselling What You Are Looking For is in the Library, which was a Time Book of the Year, a Times bestseller and a New York Times Book of the Month. Her latest novel to be translated into English, Hot Chocolate on Thursday, is her debut, which tells of the Marble Cafe, a tiny community cafe in Tokyo, and is set partly in Japan and partly in Sydney, Australia. It is a companion read to Matcha on Monday, coming soon in translation. Another book available in English by Aoyama is the international bestseller The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park. Aoyama lives in Yokohama, Japan.

Alison Watts is an Australian born freelance literary translator and longtime resident of Japan who has translated novels by Durian Sukegawa, Naoki Matayoshi, Riku Onda and Shusei Hase, as well as a travel memoir TAO: On the Road and On the Run in Outlaw China (Portobello) by Aya Goda. Read LessShe has also translated Durian Sukegawa’s reporting on Fukushima for Asymptote and was awarded the Kyoko Selden Memorial Prize for Translation in 2021 for an excerpt from Sukegawa’s travel memoir A Dosimeter on The Narrow Road to Oku.

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