Golden Kin-Yōbi: Week 1 - PM Press

Welcome to Golden Kin-Yōbi, our regular Friday giveaway where you can win some great J-Lit.  Why the name?  Well, as some of you may know, the first character used in Japanese when writing Friday means 'gold', and hopefully many of you will strike gold over the next five weeks :)

Today's first giveaway comes to us courtesy of indie publisher PM Press, and they have kindly offered two books as prizes, including worldwide postage to the winners - and great books they are too!  Tomoyuki Hoshino is an excellent writer, one with markedly South-American influences, and I read and enjoyed both these books last year.

We, the Children of Cats is a collection of various short stories and novellas, with the tone ranging from the melancholy to the bizarre.  Several of the stories are based on real-life events, such as a famous school-dinner poisoning and the story of some rich Japanese juvenile criminals who ended up in South America.  Others though are literally out of this world...  The collection made the longlist of last year's Best Translated Book Award, and if you need more encouraging to try it, my review might tip the scales :)

Lonely Hearts Killer is a short novel which is dystopian in nature.  In a near-future Japan, a country which is beginning to become a pariah state, the last remnant of hope, the young Emperor, dies and leaves the country in a state of mourning akin to shock.  As people struggle to cope with life without hope, many people decide that there really isn't much point in living at all - and some even decide that if they are going to leave it all behind, they may as well take a few others along with them...  For more on this book, have a look at my review.


So, if you'd like to win one of these books, simply comment below, leaving your name, an e-mail address and the name of the book you'd like to win.  There's no need to follow me, either here, on Facebook or on Twitter (unless you want to, of course!) - anyone can enter, and everyone has an equal chance of winning :)

Entries will close at 8 p.m. (AEST) on Thursday, January the 9th (that's 9 a.m. on Thursday, London time), and the winners will be announced in the next Golden Kin-Yōbi post (the winners, naturally, will be chosen using some kind of random on-line draw thingy).  So, what are you waiting for?  Get commenting, and good luck!