Sweet Bean Paste, by Durian Sukegawa

Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Asian Literature

First Published: 2013

Length: 213

Publication Language: Japanese

Setting: Tokyo

A beautiful moving story about a man who has fallen out of love with his life, a young school girl who visits his dorayaki stall, and an old woman who asks if she can work for him. Their lives intertwine in this story and they all influence and learn from each other. A lot of the book is about second-chances, freedom, and the history of the way Japanese people with Hansen’s disease were treated even and after the disease was eradicated.