'Healing fiction', the Asian healing literature that is also sweeping the West

It has been a success in Japan and Korea for a decade , but in recent years, and especially in the wake of the COVID pandemic, so-called "healing fiction " has penetrated the best-seller lists in Europe and the United States, driven by recommendations on social networks like TikTok and Instagram.

The pandemic marked a turning point for many readers in their search for emotional connection, care, and comfort, and as international trade fairs resumed , publishers saw a surge in interest in Asian literature.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, published in 2015 in Japan (it arrived in Spain in 2021 thanks to Plaza & Janés), was one of the first successes that paved the way for this type of emotional and everyday stories that seek to give meaning to life.

These are novels with very defined characteristics: they take place in confined, everyday spaces, such as laundromats, grocery stores, cafes, or bookstores, where tradition and modernity often converge and through which characters navigate, grappling with emotional issues and experiencing transformative experiences.

"Although they seem like simple stories, they actually touch on important themes such as loneliness, loss, guilt, and the importance of friendship and community," says Elena Ramírez, editorial director of International Fiction at Planeta.

"In a world so full of noise, anxiety, and uncertainty, these are emotionally warm reads that invite us to slow down and listen to ourselves," the editor adds, referring to a wellness alternative to the Western trend of self-improvement books with "almost mathematical formulas."

Korean author Kim Jiyun will visit Spain next week to present The Mystery of the Yeonnam-dong Laundromat (Planeta), a novel initially self-published that was a success through word of mouth and made the leap to a major publishing house in Korea, where it has been reprinted 18 times and even has a musical adaptation.

Set in a traditional laundry in a trendy Seoul neighborhood, surrounded by warm lights and the comforting scent of coffee and freshly washed clothes, the plot begins when a customer leaves a diary there, and its pages begin to fill with anonymous confessions, fears, and dreams.

According to the author, the key to this story is the empathy it generates . "The concerns these people write in the diary are stories anyone can relate to," she says, and the diary allows us to focus on "what it means to be connected."

Other recent successes include I Prescribe a Cat (Planeta, 2025) by Syou Ishida –cats usually have a special role–, or The Amazing Shop of Mrs. Yeom , by Kim Ho–Yeon (Duomo), with more than a million copies sold in his country and translated into 23 languages, about an alcoholic and homeless ex-surgeon, rescued by the candid Mrs. Yeom as a clerk in her shop.

Also The Library of New Beginnings (Planeta, 2023), by Michiko Aoyama; The Tsubaki Stationery Store (Navona, 2024), by Ito Ogawa; My Days at the Morisaki Bookstore (Plata, 2023), by Satoshi Yagisawa; and Welcome to Hyunam-Dong's Bookstore , by Hwang Bo (Espasa).

These readings are a further reflection of a growing interest in Korean and Japanese culture , increasingly present on the global scene through K-drama, K-pop, manga and anime, and in the case of Korean literature, supported by the Nobel Prize awarded to Han Kang last year.

According to data from the Literature Translation Institute (LTI) of Korea, from 2001 to 2024, 150 works of Korean literature have been translated into Spanish ; Jaekwang Shin, director of the Korean Cultural Center in Spain, points out that Spanish has been the sixth language into which most Korean works have been translated, most of them in the last five years.

" There is a special affinity between Korea and Spain , not only because of their economic size and population, but also because both countries have experienced a similar history: civil war, dictatorship, and the achievement of democracy," says Shin, who also points to a more generic factor that has increased in recent years: the "empathetic creativity" of many of these works, which are situated in the realm of the intimate.

Booksellers have also noticed this growing interest in Korean literature, according to Andrea Stefanoni, an Argentine writer and owner of La Mistral in Madrid; every time they organize an event featuring these authors, they sell out to overflowing capacity.

"We believe one of its strengths is the way it combines the intimate and the universal : it addresses family conflicts, gender issues, and social tensions with a very particular sensitivity, often from a subtle, poetic, or even disturbing perspective," he emphasizes.

The reader profile tends to be women, between 18 and 35 years old, although there is a growing interest in the adolescent audience, influenced by that culture and in need of positive messages about the meaning of life.