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What You Are Looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
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What You Are Looking for is in the Library

Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Translator Alison Watts
Length 7 hours 19 minutes
Language English
Narrators Hanako Footman, Kenichiro Thomson, Winson Ting, Shiro Kawai & Susan Momoko-Hingley

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

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Brought to you by Penguin.

The heartwarming Japanese bestseller for fans of Matt Haig, Fredrik Backman and THE CAT WHO SAVED BOOKS

'Library. What a nice-sounding word. So comforting. I feel like I'm a student again. Library ... Am I allowed to borrow books?'

'What are you looking for?' asks Tokyo's most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. She is no ordinary librarian. Naturally, she has read every book on her shelf, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of anyone who walks through her door. Sensing exactly what they're looking for in life, she provides just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Every borrower in her library is at a different crossroads, from the restless retail assistant - can she ever get out of a dead-end job? - to the juggling new mother who dreams of becoming a magazine editor, and the meticulous accountant who yearns to own an antique store. The surprise book Komachi lends to each will have transformative consequences.

Magical and uplifting, What You Are Looking for is in the Library is about the wondrousness of libraries and the power of books for change. Highlighting all the tiny comforts of being alive, it is a story that no reader will ever forget.

ยฉ2023 Michiko Aoyama (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Michiko Aoyama (Author)
Michiko Aoyama was born in 1970 in Aichi Prefecture, Honshu, Japan. After university, she became a reporter for a Japanese newspaper based in Sydney before moving back to Tokyo to work as a magazine editor. What You are Looking for is in the Library was shortlisted for the Japan Booksellers' Award, was a Time Book of the Year, a Times bestseller and a New York Times Book of the Month. It has sold two million copies and is being published in over thirty territories. Her new healing fiction title The Recovery Hippo at Hinode Park will be published internationally. Aoyama lives in Yokohama, Japan.

Illustration of person sitting

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Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

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Reviews

I ADORED this uplifting, hopeful novel ... A joy from start to finish, this book makes you feel anything is possible There's a wistful, warm-hearted appeal to Aoyama's paean to the power of books ... [it's] a quirky slice of feel-good fiction that you could recommend to anyone An endearing novel and a tribute to the transformative power of books and libraries Captivating! The novel is an undeniable page-turner, its mechanism energized by a simple question, posed again and again by the uncanny librarian, Mrs. Komachi. The question brings Michiko Aoyamaโ€™s characters often to the brink of tears; and not only her characters, but this reader, too. It is the great question of the library, and of the bookstore, and maybe of life: What are you looking for? Expand reviews
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