Introducing Terry Pratchett to a Japanese reader

October 13, 2014 10:48 AM

I'm exchanging emails with a Japanese woman from Tokyo. We talked about books, and I mentioned Terry Pratchett as one of my favorite authors. She said: "His work looks interesting! Do you have a recommendation?"

Now I have two problems with this:
1). I searched Google and Amazon for "テリー・プラチェット" and found a few things. But his Japanese Wikipedia page is not very complete. On Amazon, I recognized a few covers, but the names are different. Now I would like to know, which of his books have been translated to Japanese and what are their names?

2). From that list, which book would you recommend to a first-time Japanese reader? I searched on AskMefi and found a question from 2008 (without the Japanese part). A few people suggested "Small Gods", which I think would be a good starting point, as well. But I don't know if it is available in Japanese and her English is not good enough to read a book.

posted by mortimore to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

Best answer: Did you check Amazon Japan? Here are the Terry Pratchett author search results at Amazon Japan. Most of them have their English titles translated in the book's descriptive text or feature a cover photo that contains the English title.

These are all the Discworld titles available in Japanese. This appears to be Small Gods.
posted by Tanizaki at 11:22 AM on October 13, 2014

Maybe the Tiffany Aching books - you don't have to understand everything about Discworld to read them.

Wee Free Men - 魔女になりたいティファニーと奇妙な仲間たち
posted by betweenthebars at 11:27 AM on October 13, 2014

I have to agree on Small Gods. Mr. Ruki and I agreed on that one as a general introduction for our friends to Sir PTerry. (Soul Music if they're into music, although it requires a knowledge of 1960's American music, and the Tiffany Aching books for Harry Potter fans.)
posted by Ruki at 4:15 PM on October 14, 2014