Latest Review: "The Lake" by Banana Yoshimoto
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Will Eells on Banana Yoshimoto’s The Lake, translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich and available from Melville House Publishing. This is Will’s second review in a row, so I’m not sure how much of an introduction he really needs . . . ...
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The Lake
“The first time Nakajima stayed over, I dreamed of my dead mom.” This is the first sentence of Banana Yoshimoto’s latest novel to be translated into English, The Lake. I vaguely recall learning or reading somewhere some sort of creative writing related piece of wisdom—or maybe it’s just some advice, or simply ...
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Latest Review: "Manazuru" by Hiromi Kawakami
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Tananaugh Espinoza on Hiromi Kawakami’s Manazuru, which is translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich and available from Counterpoint. Tananaugh Espinoza was a student in my “World Literature & Translation” class this past spring. She ...
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Manazuru
Hiromi Kawakami’s Manazuru is the carefully crafted story of Kei, and her lingering attachment to the husband who disappeared 12 years earlier. She travels to the titular seaside town, Manazuru, on a whim, feeling somehow that it is connected to her husband, Rei. Beset by a ghostly companion who seems to know something of ...
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Monkey Business [APS's Japanese Expansion]
A Public Space has always been dedicated to promoting international literature, so it’s not all that surprising that Brigid Hughes has joined forces with Roland Kelts (author of Japanamerica), Ted Goossen (professor of Japanese lit) and Motoyuki Shibata (translator into Japanese of Pynchon [!] and a number of other ...
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Time of Sky & Castles in the Air [Why This Book Should Win the BTBA]
As started last week, we’ll be highlighting the five finalists in the poetry category for the BTBA. Similar to what we did for the fiction longlist, these will be framed by the question: “Why should this book win?” Click here for all past and future posts in this series. Today’s post is by poetry committee ...
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1Q84: The Cover
One of the most anticipated books of the year has to be Murakami Haruki’s (or Haruki Murakami’s) 1Q84, an epically long book that Random House is bringing out in October.1 And to warm up the publicity machine, they just released an image of the cover and a blog post from Chip Kidd discussing the ...
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