HarperOne president and publisher Judith Curr launched HarperVia in 2019 as a home for international literature and with the slogan “books that take you everywhere.” The imprint’s Nomad Editions line puts spin on that motto, says HarperVia editor Alexa Frank. Inspired by Japanese pocket novels, which were originally designed with commuters in mind, the portable Nomad volumes, with their compact trim size (4 1/8” x 5 7/8”), are “books you can take everywhere.”
Frank, a highly regarded translator of manga who acquires and edits many of HarperVia’s Japanese titles, is confident in the format’s allure, not only because Japanese culture is hot but because of larger cultural shifts. “Among Gen Z, there’s been a return to the analog—there’s a nostalgia for the Y2K period and a shift against reading on screens,” she says. “This format appeals on all these fronts.”
The first three Nomad titles pubbed in November and include two that Frank edited: The Tatami Galaxy by Japanese author Tomihiko Morimi (translated by Emily Balistrieri) and A Magical Girl Retires by Korean author Park Seolyeon (translated by Anton Hur); the third, Almond by Sohn Won-pyung (translated by Sandy Joosun Lee), is also a Korean work. Three more are due out in March: Sohn’s Counterattacks at Thirty (translated by Sean Lin Halbert), Morimi’s The Tatami Time Machine Blues (translated by Balistrieri), and Toward Eternity by A Magical Girl Retires translator Hur, who is Korean.
All titles are past HarperVia releases. “Nomad is actually a second or even third format for a book, after hardcover and trade paperback, and is intended to appeal to younger, more price-sensitive readers who are also attracted to the aesthetics of the format,” says Juan Milà, editorial director for HarperVia. Each pocket-size softcover sports French flaps and a belly band, and a hidden illustration under the jacket. “In this way,” he explains, “the content itself is connected to the format.”
Prize winners and pop culture
Nomad Editions is just one example of Japanese trendspotting at HarperVia. One of Milà’s early acquisitions for the imprint, The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa (translated by Louise Heal Kawai), typifies the cozy fiction that’s made a splash internationally. “I first heard about the book from Casanovas & Lynch, the Barcelona literary agency, and was intrigued,” Milà says. “It was short, it had cats. Who wouldn’t be?” He acquired the title through the Emily Books Agency, which is located in Taiwan and specializes in Japanese authors. It has remained one of HarperVia’s bestselling titles since its 2021 release. Natsukawa’s sequel, The Cat Who Saved the Library, again translated by Kawai, pubbed in 2025.
Such books are “the reading equivalent of easy-listening,” Frank says, acknowledging their commercial success. She notes that other HarperVia titles become popular because of a tie-in to manga or anime.
Frank joined HarperVia after earning an MFA in creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and studying as a Fulbright fellow in Japan, which gave her an appreciation for the breadth and depth of the country’s untranslated literature. She’s been instrumental in bringing Japanese titles to the imprint, including Akutagawa Prize winner Idol, Burning by Rin Usami (translated by Asa Yoneda) and Naoki Prize winner The Dilemmas of Working Women by Fumio Yamamoto (translated by Brian Bergstrom).
The latter title, which was originally published in Japan in 2000 and according to HarperVia has sold nearly half a million copies there, is an example of the type of backlist literary fiction Frank would like to bring to U.S. readers, albeit with modest expectations. “That’s not to say that classic literature can’t sell,” she said, noting the TikTok-driven popoularity of a New Directions title, Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, which was first published in Japan in 1948 and translated by Donald Keene in 1958. Creators on the platform embraced the (very) backlist novel around 2021, and sales took off.
That’s not the sort of serendipity an editor can plan for, of course. Frank also sees potential in nonfiction and is preparing a two-volume edition of the memoirs of the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, an Oscar-winning composer (The Last Emperor) and a prominent figure in city pop, a Japanese music genre that emerged in the 1970s. “With the revival and popularity of city pop—Masayoshi Takanaka’s tour sold out, for example—I think people will respond to the memoirs,” she says.
With the bulk of HarperVia’s books in the fiction category, Frank is looking forward to branching out. “There are so many good books that we miss,” she says. “I want to break through that barrier.”
