Oh, Tama!

"[Mieko Kanai is] not interested in describing objects; she wants to accentuate their amorphous nature."
—Sofia Samatar, Paris Review

“Kanai's stories remind me of Italo Calvino or Jorge Luis Borges, with their stylistically vague flatness yet strong character-driven underpinnings… I highly recommended them and look forward to more.”
—Todd Shimoda, Asian Review of Books

“A comic masterpiece in a brilliant translation that captures the verbal acrobatics of the original with wit and warmth. Oh, Tama! made me laugh so much people were staring at me in the subway. One of the funniest books I have ever read.”
—Janine Beichman, recipient, National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship, 2018-2019 and Translator of Ōoka  Makoto, Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets

“Oh, Tama! is a zany sendup of family life, featuring a pregnant cat, an absent though pregnant bar owner, a freelance photographer, and assorted semi-relatives who drop by to cuddle the cat and strain the photographer’s hospitality. Kanai Mieko is one of Japan’s leading authors, and her sly mix of high-minded ideas with earthy humor has been perfectly captured in this lively translation.”
—Phyllis Birnbaum, translator of Heaven and Hell by Takarabe Toriko

"An enticing novel and one that allows the reader to envelop herself in the strange sights, sounds, and tastes of this group of Japanese characters."
—Janet Mary Livesey, World Literature Today

". . . philosophical speculation and mind-bending textual play give way to a more light-hearted look at how people make their way in the contemporary world. . . . Kanai delineates this territory not with drama and histrionics, but with a sharp eye on events that are never important in themselves, but always wittily observed. Translators Tomoko Aoyama and Paul McCarthy capture the sly smile that is surely present in Kanai’s Japanese original."
—David Cozy, Japan Times

Reviews for Meiko Kanai's The Word Book

“Kanai has an ephemeral sensuality that offsets and complements her modulated voices, who guide you through mini epics in this crisp, cool collection.”
—Bret McCabe, Baltimore City Paper

“Realities shift and are at once dreamlike and tangible. The range of subject matter and register is dazzling.”—Steve Finbow, Japan Times

"These stories demand attentive reading, although, as with a David Lynch film, it seems the solution to the puzzle will always be just beyond reach; but also like in Lynch’s films, the payoff is in trying to unravel the mystery, and in the beauty of the journey."
—Literary Review

"The brilliance of this collection completely caught me off guard, explorations of relationships lost, meditations on authorship, examination of events, that skip from dream, to memory, from childhood to adulthood,and pass from generation to generation, memories that seem to hover and exist in some other ethereal realm."
—Zoran Rosko