Yoko Tawada

Yoko Tawada's new novel is a breathtakingly light-hearted meditation on mortality and fully displays what Rivka Galchen has called her "brilliant, shimmering, magnificent strangeness"

The Emissary

in 2018 i wrote a very similar paragraph about “the moon” shining too bright through my window and it turning out to be a street light. it has since burnt out. 

soiled plants

At bedtime you’d turn off the light, only to find the moon so bright you couldn’t sleep. Wondering how it could possibly be that bright you’d open a window to find the moon wasn't even out. It would only be the lead of a pencil left in the road that looked as if it was shining. Streetlights and lights in the houses would all be out, as if urging the night to act like night already,

I’m all for symbolism and reading between the lines but this one confused me and was difficult to get through 

Sarah Wilson

I would describe this as: frightening, surreal, dreamlike in post-environmental-catastrophe apocalyptic Japan where old people live forever but it’s a curse and young people are born into aging bodies with unshakable optimism to an inhospitable Earth with closed borders, language going extinct, humans endangered; but also heartwarming relationship between great-grandfather and great-grandson

Rebecca Lum

aywen

reminds me of the way 1984 was strewn with new vocabulary, but in reverse, owing to both dystopian surroundings and societal resignation/acceptance to them. climate disaster has already come to pass; humans are living in an open-endedness that's never really concretely addressed. keeps you guessing as to what happened. injected with disdain for japanese nationalism. gorgeous, infused with both the curiousity of a child and the measured observations of a 100+ yr old man. undeniably strange but sparklingly hopeful despite the circumstances

Surprisingly sentimental distopian novel.

Erika Kodama

GokhanCa

"Müthiş bir hayalgücü ile yaratılmış bir dünya ve..." İşte bu cümleyi devam ettirebilmek isterdim... Olay yok, akış yok... Dünya var, o kadar :)

diya

Winner of 2018 National Book Award in Translated Literature Library Journal Best Books of 2018 Yoko Tawada’s new novel is a breathtakingly light-hearted meditation on mortality and fully displays what Rivka Galchen has called her “brilliant, shimmering, magnificent strangeness” Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient—frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism. Yoshiro concentrates on nourishing Mumei, a strangely wonderful boy who offers “the beauty of the time that is yet to come.” A delightful, irrepressibly funny book, The Emissary is filled with light. Yoko Tawada, deftly turning inside-out “the curse,” defies gravity and creates a playful joyous novel out of a dystopian one, with a legerdemain uniquely her own.

The Emissary

Reviews

Highlights