I am always obsessing over something, and right now, it’s these seven writers. I consider them essential, and now I shall badger you to move them to the top of your reading list.
1. Clarice Lispector
Want to feel unsettled and amazed all at once? Look no further than the brilliant (and beautiful) Clarice Lispector, a Ukrainian-Brazilian socialite with a wild mind and incandescent, hypnotic prose. She’s unlike anyone else out there.
Where to start? The Complete Stories and then The Passion According to G.H.
2. Anne Carson
What must it be like to have a brain as powerful as Anne Carson’s? Anne Carson is a classics professor, poet, translator, and essayist, and she writes some of the smartest, strangest books I’ve ever encountered.
Where to start? Eros the Bittersweet and then Glass, Irony and God and then Autobiography of Red
3. Joy Williams
There’s nothing quite like a Joy Williams short story: Everything is familiar and foreign all at once. The humans behave in mostly unhuman ways and yet you feel like you know them, like you’ve also felt this strange conglomeration of emotions and desires, like you also have been trapped in a moment like this one. I could read her all day long (and have).
Where to start? The Visiting Privilege and then Escapes
4. Yukio Mishima
His florid, intense personality (and infamous suicide) garnered him almost as much attention as his writing, but he remains the master of modern Japanese literature. Mishima’s Sea of Fertility tetralogy is incredible and moves you seamlessly into another world, wrapped in mystery and expressed with power.
Where to start? Spring Snow and then Confessions of a Mask
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5. Elena Ferrante
Elena Ferrante is the pseudonym of an Italian novelist, and she’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. I re-read My Brilliant Friend while in Ischia last month, and experiencing that story again in a portion of its setting was a magical, transformative experience. Her novels will stick with me for years to come.
Where to start? My Brilliant Friend and then the rest of the Neapolitan novels
6. Simone Weil
This irritable, beleaguered genius wrote some of the most unusual and lucid modern philosophy on faith, reason, government, and individual agency. Eminently quotable and pleasantly readable, Weil was a woman that her troubled world needed.
Where to start? Simone Weil: An Anthology
7. Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Fitzgerald gets far less attention than she deserves. She produced these tidy, perfect little novels, masters in form, and did it all quietly while raising a brood of children in England (her literary career began when she was 58!). They’re quick and surprising, delightful from start to finish.
Where to start? The Blue Flower and then Offshore
Who are you reading and loving right now?
Little Stories 
superb list!
great taste!
Beautiful list…try (if you have not) Tales For A TIme Being ~ Ruth Ozeki I think your interest in Japan and then add quantum physics, will satisfy.