Toshikazu Kawaguchi's moving Before the Coffee Gets Cold, translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, explores the age-old question: what would you do if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe's time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by Alzheimer's, see their sister one last time, and meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .
Continue the beautiful storytelling with Tales from the Cafe, Before Your Memory Fades, and Before We Say Goodbye - all out now!
Staff Choice: Bella
A play-turned-into-novel by a Japanese playwright. This title has been selling like hotcakes for over a year now, but I hadn't given it a chance despite my love for the Japanese translated fiction genre. I've finally taken the plunge and am not surprised as to why it's so popular. A cozy, hidden gem of a cafe underground in a back alley in Tokyo that allows you to travel back to the past, and an array of characters, each with a real reason to travel back. However, there's a catch to traveling back. You need to adhere to five very specific rules... or else...