People from My Neighbourhood

Brilliant, uncanny and imaginative storytelling of a neighbourhood and its strange characters (both human and nonhuman). Each chapter is about a specific character from an area in Tokyo. The stories are very short vignettes (about 3 pages on average) and they immerse themselves in the bizarre, from a school made of sweets to a battle of imagination between two fiercely powerful minds. The stories are all the more lifelike for their disconnection from a typical reality, and are both funny and fun. Brilliant writing.

This is one of the most outright fun books I've read in a while. Very short, surreal stories, but all connected in various ways, so it reads more like a novella than a collection of short stories.