"If you could go back, who would you want to meet?In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee--the chance to travel back in time. Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn't so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold. Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi's internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?"--

In a small back alley in Tokyo at a century-old coffee shop rumored to offer patrons the chance to travel back in time, four customers reevaluate their formative life choices.

Down an alleyway in the heart of Tokyo, there is an underground café that's been serving carefully brewed coffee for over a hundred years. Legend says that this coffeeshop offers its customers the chance to travel back in time. The rules, however, are not simple: you must sit in one particular seat at one particular time of day. You can't venture outside the café, nor can you change the present. And, most importantly, you have only the time it takes to drink a hot cup of coffee-or risk getting stuck forever.

The regulars at Café Funiculi Funicula are well-acquainted with the ability it grants them to take a trip into the past--as well as the strict rules involved. What would you change if you could travel back in time?

In a Tokyo alleyway, there is a café that allows patrons to travel back in time. This is a story of four new customers--a daughter, a comedian, a sister, and a lover--each with something they wish they had said differently.

In a back alley in Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee--the chance to travel back in time. With faces both familiar and new, Tales from the Cafe follows the story of four patrons who visit to take advantage of café Funiculi Funicula's time-traveling offer and revisit moments with family, friends and lovers. Each one must face up to the past to move on with their lives. Kawaguchi's wistful and heartwarming new novel once again invites the reader to ask themselves, 'What would you do if you could travel back in time?'.