Where Europe Begins
Stories
Yoko Tawada author Susan Bernofsky translator Yumi Selden translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published:9th May '07
Should be back in stock very soon
Chosen as a 2005 Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, Where Europe Begins has been described by the Russian literary phenomenon Victor Pelevin as "a spectacular journey through a world of colliding languages and multiplying cities." In these stories' disparate settings—Japan, Siberia, Russia, and Germany—the reader becomes as much a foreigner as the author, or the figures that fill this book: the ghost of a burned woman, a traveler on the Trans-Siberian railroad, a mechanical doll, a tongue, a monk who leaps into his own reflection. Through the timeless art of storytelling, Yoko Tawada discloses the virtues of bewilderment, estrangement, and Hilaritas: the goddess of rejoicing.
"An undeniably superb, even breathtaking short story collection about life spent in the in-between by the Japanese-born, German-domiciled, multi-dimensioned Tawada." -- Asian Week
"Tawada's slender accounts of alienation achieve a remarkable potency. Each one sustains a masterly balance between the tenuous but meaningful connections of dreams and the direct, earthy storytelling of folk tales. " -- The New York Times
"A spectacular journey through a world of colliding languages and multiplying cities." -- Victor Pelevin
"Only the most profound reverence, I felt, could do justice to this writer and this work." -- Wim Wenders
"In Tawada's work, one has the feeling of having wandered into a mythology that is not one's own." -- Rivka Galchen - The New Yorker
ISBN: 9780811217026
Dimensions: 180mm x 130mm x 15mm
Weight: 177g
224 pages