Alia Luria’s Geri o Shimasu: Adventures of a Baka Gaijin Earns Distinguished Favorite at the 2025 NYC Big Book Awards

We’re thrilled to announce that Alia Luria’s memoir Geri o Shimasu: Adventures of a Baka Gaijin has been honored as a Distinguished Favorite in the 2025 NYC Big Book Awards!

This book is a hilarious, heartfelt, and sharply observant journey through cultural immersion and all the delightful (and occasionally awkward) missteps that come with it. Alia invites us along as she fully embraces the role of the baka gaijin—the “foolish foreigner”—with wit, warmth, and honesty.

What makes Geri o Shimasu so special is its balance of laugh-out-loud humor and genuine reflection. It’s about getting things wrong, learning, laughing at yourself, and finding meaning in all the absurd, beautiful messiness of life abroad.

The NYC Big Book Awards honor books of excellence from all corners of the publishing world. To earn a Distinguished Favorite is to be recognized as one of the best, and Alia’s book shines brightly among this year’s winners.

If you’re looking for a smart, funny, and deeply human read, Geri o Shimasu will deliver all of that and more.

👉 Geri o Shimasu: Adventures of a Baka Gaijin is available now wherever books are sold.

Huge congratulations to Alia on this well-deserved recognition—we can’t wait for more readers to discover this gem!