Lesley Downer
I write historical fiction set in Japan - women’s untold stories, largely true and based on meticulous and detailed research, though primarily, of course, good yarns. I’ve just finished The Shogun’s Queen, the fourth of The Shogun Quartet, four novels set in the nineteenth century during the tumultuous fifteen years when Japan was convulsed by civil war and transformed from rule by the shoguns into a society that looked to the west.
Preorder: http://bit.ly/TheShogunsQueen
The second, The Last Concubine, was shortlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year 2009 and translated into 30 languages. The other two novels are The Courtesan and the Samurai and The Samurai’s Daughter. My non-fiction on Japan includes Geisha: The Remarkable Truth Behind the
If you like author Lesley Downer here is the list of authors you may also like
Buy books on AmazonTotal similar authors (33)
-
Christopher Berry-Dee
Chris was a former Royal Marine intelligence officer. He is now a criminologist who has interviewed over 30 serial killers.
Buy books on Amazon -
Mineko Iwasaki
Mineko Iwasaki (born Masako Tanaka) is a Japanese businesswoman, author and former geisha. Iwasaki was the most famous geisha in Japan until her sudden retirement at the age of 29. Known for her performances for celebrity and royalty during her geisha life, Iwasaki was the heir apparent (atotori) to her geisha house (okiya) while she was just a young apprentice.
Buy books on Amazon
American author Arthur Golden interviewed her for background information when writing his 1997 book, Memoirs of a Geisha. Iwasaki later regretted interviewing for Golden, having cited a breach of confidentiality, and later sued and settled out of court with Golden for the parallelism between his book and her life. In 2002, she released her own autobiography, titled Geisha of Gion in -
Simone van der Vlugt
Simone van der Vlugt is an acclaimed Dutch author, well known for her young adult novels. The reunion was her debut novel for adults, it sold over 200,000 copies and was translated into German, French and English.
Buy books on Amazon -
Gaiutra Bahadur
Gaiutra Bahadur is an American writer. She is the author of Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture, a personal history of indenture shortlisted in 2014 for the Orwell Prize, the British literary prize for artful political writing. Her debut fiction, the short story “The Stained Veil,” appears in the anthology Go Home! (New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2018).
Buy books on Amazon
Gaiutra was born in Guyana and emigrated with her family to Jersey City, New Jersey when she was six years old. A lyric essay previewing her current book project, which explores the idea of America through its 20th-century entanglements with her home country, runs in the current issue of the Australian literary magazine The Griffith Review. Entitled “Tales of the Sea,” it is also r -
Masuji Ibuse
Masuji Ibuse (井伏 鱒二) was a Japanese novelist.
Buy books on Amazon
At Waseda University, Ibuse was greatly influenced by the works of Shakespeare and Basho; he was also an avid reader of French fiction and poetry. Ibuse went as far as to pawn a watch to try to understand the necessities of writers.
In 1918 Ibuse met naturalist writer Iwano Homei. Homei's literature was appealing to Ibuse and would later influence some of Ibuse's literary works. Ibuse befriended student Aoki Nampachi in Waseda, Aoki was a mentor and a great influence in the writings of Ibuse, Aoki's influence can be found in The Carp, where Ibuse ideolizes Aoki's friendship and represents his feelings towards this friendship in a carp. Ibuse started writing his first essays in 1922, shortly after -
Lale Gül
Lale is een Turks-Nederlandse schrijfster die in een streng-islamitisch gezin in Amsterdam-West opgroeide en later afstand van nam.
Buy books on Amazon -
Pascal Engman
Pascal Engman is a former journalist. Affected by the increasingly threatening rhetorics towards journalists in Sweden, he took some time off and travelled to Chile, where he wrote Patrioterna: a dark thriller about what can happen when people begin to act after their vitriolic words on social media.
Buy books on Amazon -
Narine Abgaryan
Наринэ Абгарян
Buy books on Amazon
Նարինե Յուրիի Աբգարյան
Narine Yuryevna Abgaryan (Наринэ Абгарян) is a Russian writer of Armenian origin, a blogger. Graduated from Yerevan State Linguistic University V. Ya. Bryusova, since 1993 lives in Moscow. She became known after the publication of the autobiographical book "Manyunya" (2010). With this book, she became a laureate of the Russian National Literary Prize "Manuscript of the Year" in the nomination "Language". Entered the long list of nominees for the 2011 Big Book Award. -
Jake Adelstein
Jake Adelstein has been an investigative journalist in Japan since 1993 and low-ranking Zen Buddhist priest since 2017--and is unlikely to ever achieve satori. That's okay. He's considered one of the foremost experts on organized crime in Japan and works as a writer and consultant in Japan, the United States and France. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: A Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan (Vintage) and has written two other books published by Marchialy in France.
Buy books on Amazon
𝗝’𝗔𝗜 𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗨 𝗠𝗢𝗡 𝗔̂𝗠𝗘 𝗘𝗡 𝗕𝗜𝗧𝗖𝗢𝗜𝗡𝗦 (I Sold My Soul For Bitcoins) 2019 -
Liza Dalby
With its fascinating story of characters caught up in a world they themselves don't understand, Hidden Buddhas may well be Liza Dalby's best work yet. Besides taking us on a journey through little-known corners of Japan, it offers us an engaging and believable portrait of people driven to do things they may not have imagined." --Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha
According to esoteric Buddhist theology, the world is suffering through a final corrupt era. Many in Japan believe that after the world ends, the Buddha of the Future will appear and bring about a new age of enlightenment. Hundreds of temples in Japan are known to keep mysterious hidden buddhas secreted away except on rare designated viewing days. Are they being protected
Buy books on Amazon -
Graeme Simsion
Graeme Simsion is a former IT consultant and the author of two nonfiction books on database design who decided, at the age of fifty, to turn his hand to fiction. His first novel, The Rosie Project, was published in 2013 and translation rights have been sold in forty languages. Movie rights have been optioned to Sony Pictures. The sequels, The Rosie Effect, and The Rosie Result, were also bestsellers, with total sales of the series in excess of five million.
Buy books on Amazon
Graeme's third novel was The Best of Adam Sharp, a story of a love affair re-kindled - and its consequences. Movie rights have been optioned by Vocab Films / New Sparta Films with Toni Collette attached to direct.
Creative Differences was originally created as an 'Audible Original' audiob -
David Grann
David Grann is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z. Killers of the Flower Moon was a finalist for The National Book Award and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award. Look for David Grann’s latest book, The Wager, coming soon!
He is also the author of The White Darkness and the collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes . Grann's storytelling has garnered several honors, including a George Polk Award. He lives with his wife and children in New York.
Buy books on Amazon -
Sayo Masuda
Masuda was born in 1925, near the town of Shiojiri in Nagano Prefecture. During her later teen years, into her early twenties, she was an onsen geisha at a hot-spring resort in Japan. After this, she became a prostitute, vigorously protesting the passage of anti-prostitution laws. She eventually got a job making soap for a Korean worker, which she held for several months. When the soap business failed, she began drinking heavily, which led to her near death from liver failure and a suicide attempt. She survived and quit drinking, and when she had sufficiently recovered, she began to look after children, eventually becoming a full-time caretaker for several years. Eventually, she was able to open her own restaurant, and ran it for several de
Buy books on Amazon -
Charles C. Mann
Charles C. Mann is a correspondent for Science and The Atlantic Monthly, and has cowritten four previous books including Noah’s Choice: The Future of Endangered Species and The Second Creation . A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, he has won awards from the American Bar Association, the Margaret Sanger Foundation, the American Institute of Physics, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, among others. His writing was selected for The Best American Science Writing 2003 and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003. He lives with his wife and their children in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Buy books on Amazon -
Daniel Keyes
Daniel Keyes was an American author best known for his Hugo award-winning short story and Nebula award-winning novel Flowers for Algernon. Keyes was given the Author Emeritus honor by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2000.
Buy books on Amazon
Keyes was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York. At age 17, he joined the U.S. Maritime Service as ship's purser. He obtained a B.A. in psychology from Brooklyn College, and after a stint in fashion photography (partner in a photography studio), earned a Master's Degree in English and American Literature at night while teaching English in New York City public schools during the day and writing weekends.
In the early 1950s, he was editor of the pulp magazine Marvel Science Fiction for publisher Marti -
Christopher Isherwood
English-born American writer Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood portrayed Berlin in the early 1930s in his best known works, such as Goodbye to Berlin (1939), the basis for the musical Cabaret (1966). Isherwood was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.
Buy books on Amazon
With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .
After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932) -
Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成) was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read today.
Buy books on Amazon
Nobel Lecture: 1968
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize... -
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist, satirist, and journalist, best known for his keen social commentary and his novel Vanity Fair (1847–1848). His works often explored themes of ambition, hypocrisy, and the moral failings of British society, making him one of the most significant literary figures of the Victorian era.
Buy books on Amazon
Born in Calcutta, British India, he was sent to England for his education after his father’s death. He attended Charterhouse School, where he developed a distaste for the rigid school system, and later enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge. However, he left without earning a degree, instead traveling in Europe and pursuing artistic ambitions.
After losing much of his inheritance due to bad investments, Thackera -
Maeve Binchy
Anne Maeve Binchy Snell was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist, and speaker. Her novels were characterised by a sympathetic and often humorous portrayal of small-town life in Ireland, and surprise endings. Her novels, which were translated into 37 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. Her death at age 73, announced by Vincent Browne on Irish television late on 30 July 2012, was mourned as the death of one of Ireland's best-loved and most recognisable writers.
Buy books on Amazon
She appeared in the US market, featuring on The New York Times Best Seller list and in Oprah's Book Club. Recognised for her "total absence of malice" and generosity to other writers, she finished third in a 2000 poll for World Book Day, ahead -
Alan Brennert
Alan Brennert is the author of the historical novels Palisades Park, Honolulu (chosen one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post), and Moloka'i, which won the 2006 Bookies Award, sponsored by the Contra Costa Library, for the Book Club Book of the Year (and has sold over 600,000 copies since publication). It was also a 2012 One Book, One San Diego selection. He has won an Emmy Award and a People's Choice Award for his work as a writer-producer on the television series L.A. Law, and his short story "Ma Qui" was honored with a Nebula Award. His new novel, Daughter of Moloka'i, will be published by St. Martin's Press on February 19, 2019. Follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/alan.brennert.
Buy books on Amazon
http://us.macmillan.com/palisad -
Mineko Iwasaki
Mineko Iwasaki (born Masako Tanaka) is a Japanese businesswoman, author and former geisha. Iwasaki was the most famous geisha in Japan until her sudden retirement at the age of 29. Known for her performances for celebrity and royalty during her geisha life, Iwasaki was the heir apparent (atotori) to her geisha house (okiya) while she was just a young apprentice.
Buy books on Amazon
American author Arthur Golden interviewed her for background information when writing his 1997 book, Memoirs of a Geisha. Iwasaki later regretted interviewing for Golden, having cited a breach of confidentiality, and later sued and settled out of court with Golden for the parallelism between his book and her life. In 2002, she released her own autobiography, titled Geisha of Gion in -
Liza Dalby
With its fascinating story of characters caught up in a world they themselves don't understand, Hidden Buddhas may well be Liza Dalby's best work yet. Besides taking us on a journey through little-known corners of Japan, it offers us an engaging and believable portrait of people driven to do things they may not have imagined." --Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha
According to esoteric Buddhist theology, the world is suffering through a final corrupt era. Many in Japan believe that after the world ends, the Buddha of the Future will appear and bring about a new age of enlightenment. Hundreds of temples in Japan are known to keep mysterious hidden buddhas secreted away except on rare designated viewing days. Are they being protected
Buy books on Amazon -
Manjul Bajaj
Manjul Bajaj is a writer from India. She graduated in Economics from Delhi University and then did a Masters in Rural Management and another in Environmental Science. For much of her adult life she worked in the field of rural development. India's seemingly sleepy villages, its seething beneath the surface small towns, the wisdom and courage of ordinary people living unimaginably difficult lives, the diversity, the complexity, the sheer depth of the Indian subcontinent's many traditions, rituals, philosophies and ways of life, its music, literature, crafts and performing arts, its varied languages - all of these fascinate her, as do the many conflicts and contradictions that arise as the country grows and modernizes. Through her fiction she
Buy books on Amazon -
-
Isabel Hoving
Isabel Hoving was born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She began her career as a secondary school teacher, during which time she became very active in the Dutch women's movement.
Buy books on Amazon
She eventually gave up her job to study literary theory full-time, and spent some months in Senegal, West Africa for a research project.
Hoving's first book, The Dream Merchant, was published in the Netherlands as De gevleugelde kat. It won the 2003 Gouden Zoen award, the Netherlands' most prestigious children's book prize. Her book on Caribbean women migrant writing, In Praise of New Travelers, was published in 2001. She is co-editor of the Dutch five-volume series Cultuur en migratie, on the influence of migrants on Dutch culture.
Hoving is now an academic and lect -
Chris Broad
Chris Broad is a British filmmaker and founder of the Abroad in Japan YouTube channel, one of the largest foreign YouTube channels in Japan with over 2.5 million subscribers and 400 million views. Over ten years and two hundred videos, Chris has visited all of Japan's forty-seven prefectures, focusing Abroad in Japan on travel, food and culture. He has also covered contemporary issues through documentaries on the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. His experiences have made him a sought-after voice on life inside Japan and he has been featured on the BBC, TEDx, NHK and the Japan Times.
Buy books on Amazon -
Patrick French
Patrick French was a British writer and historian, based in London. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he studied English and American literature.
Buy books on Amazon
French is the author of several books including Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (1994), a biography of Francis Younghusband, The World Is What It Is (2008), an authorized biography of Nobel Laureate V.S Naipaul which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States of America, and India: A Portrait, an intimate biography of 1.2 billion people.(2010)
During the 1992 general election, French was a Green Party candidate for Parliament. He has sat on the executive committee of the Tibet Support Group UK, and was a founding member of the inter-governmen -
John Dougill
John Dougill grew up in Grimsby and has spent the rest of his life getting as far away as possible. He currently resides in Kyoto, Japan, where he is professor of British Studies at Ryukoku University. His student days took place at Leeds University and Queen's College, Oxford, in the heady days of the early 1970s when the future beckoned with golden arms. He completed his education at the University of Life when he spent a year travelling round the world: Nepal and Bali were his favourites. As a teacher, he spent three years in the Middle East and seven years in Oxford before moving to Japan in 1986. In addition to the books listed here he has produced twelve Japanese college textbooks and 'Gentleman and Hooligan: The British on Film 1921-
Buy books on Amazon -
Hannah Mathewson
Hannah Mathewson was born in Cambridge, UK. Her untamed creative streak led her through acting, music, drawing, and a decade-long desire to make films, before she narrowed in on writing in her teens.
Buy books on Amazon
She studied Film and Television at the University of East Anglia, and worked in various jobs in cinemas, libraries, and archives while pursuing writing. She currently lives in Oxfordshire. -
Amy Stanley
Amy Stanley is a professor in the History Department at Northwestern University. She can often be found lecturing about global history, but she is most at home in early modern Japan, specifically in the great city of Edo (now Tokyo). Like many social historians, she is happiest when reading other people's correspondence and perusing shopping lists from 200 years ago. She knows a lot about samurai, and she can tell you all about the condition of the toilets in Edo Castle, but you probably don't want to know. When she's not dwelling in the nineteenth century, she is in Evanston, IL, with her husband, two little boys, and a mutt who may actually be a Catahoula Leopard Dog.
Buy books on Amazon -
Isabel Hoving
Isabel Hoving was born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She began her career as a secondary school teacher, during which time she became very active in the Dutch women's movement.
Buy books on Amazon
She eventually gave up her job to study literary theory full-time, and spent some months in Senegal, West Africa for a research project.
Hoving's first book, The Dream Merchant, was published in the Netherlands as De gevleugelde kat. It won the 2003 Gouden Zoen award, the Netherlands' most prestigious children's book prize. Her book on Caribbean women migrant writing, In Praise of New Travelers, was published in 2001. She is co-editor of the Dutch five-volume series Cultuur en migratie, on the influence of migrants on Dutch culture.
Hoving is now an academic and lect -
Steve Tibble
Steve Tibble is honorary research associate at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the author of Monarchy and Lordships in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099–1291. He lives in London.
Buy books on Amazon -
V. Sanjay Kumar
V Sanjay Kumar is a former investment banker and software entrepreneur. He is a Director at Sakshi, an art gallery in Mumbai. (www.sakshigallery.com)
Buy books on Amazon
He began his writing career in 2010. He has published four works of fiction since then.
He won the 2018 Bridport Prize for Short Fiction. Other stories were commended in the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize (two) and Galley Beggar Short Story Prize.
He has spent most of his life in Chennai and Mumbai. He resides currently in Bangalore.