Akinari, Ueda, Tales of Moonlight and Rain, Columbia University Press, 2006.

As timeless and canonical as The Tale of Genji, this collection of Japanese occult stories blends realism with the grotesque.

Rubin, Jay, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, The Harvill Press, 2002.

Rubin is both a translator and fan of Murakami's work. In this book, he traces Murakami's career using interviews he conducted with the author between 1993 and 2001.

Soseki, Natsume, I Am a Cat, Tuttle Publishing, 2002, originally published in 1905.

This 1905 satire by eminent Japanese author Natsume chronicles the lives of a middle-class Japanese family from the point of view of their cat, Mr. Sneeze.

Zimmerman, Bernhard and Thomas Marier, Greek Tragedy: An Introduction, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

Zimmerman and Marier analyze the most famous plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes.