Toshikazu Kawaguchi: Before the Coffee Gets Cold (first published in Japanese in 2015)
The first book by Japanese playwright and theater director Toshikazu Kawaguchi, based on his play with the same title. The book won several awards and was translated into English, Chinese, and Vietnamese before being published in Hungarian. Since then, it has been translated to Polish, Italian, Spanish, French, Arabic, Indonesian, Portuguese, Turkish, Romanian, Dutch, German, Finnish, Lithuanian, Czech, Swedish, Serbian, Greek, and Thai.
Café Funiculi Funicula opened in 1874 and has been operating for more than 140 years. Legend said that there is a chair which, if you sit on, help you travel in time once in your life. But there are rules: you can only meet someone you already know and you can’t change the past in any way. You also have to return to the present before your coffee gets cold. There are even a lot more rules, but many people can’t be deterred and embark on time travel. In the first book, we learn the stories of four women who failed to tell their loved ones something.
The book was a great success worldwide. It was also adapted into a movie and a TV series, and four sequels followed. The last, fifth volume, was published in 2024.
Interesting fact: English translations of cosy Japanese fiction always have a cat on the cover, regardless of whether it appears in the story or not.
