Memoirs of a Polar Bear

Enchanting... deliciously whimsical and playful... it's through the eyes of [Tawada's] polar bears that we see humanity most clearly -- Lucy Scholes * National *
Surreal and beguiling... fizzing with ideas... funny and outrageous... Memoirs of a Polar Bear dazzles. The final paragraph, swirling with memory and snow evokes the calm gravity of Joyce's ending to The Dead -- Lee Langley * Spectator *
Magnificent... A heartfelt read **** * Manchester Evening News *
Philosophical, political and often profound... rich in physical sensation and whimsy -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
A surreal exploration of the bear within us... A work that plays with the fantastical and allegorical ... Tawada mine[s] the rich historical seam as [she] seeks to understand the bears in our mind -- Tim Flannery * New Statesman *
Full of wonder and curiosity -- Todd Shimoda * Asian Review of Books *
Tawada brings her fine-nosed, soft-furred beasts to life * Economist *
Hums with beautiful strangeness * New York Times Book Review *
Playful and fascinating... Sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, sometimes alienating, but always deeply intimate -- Dominic O'Key * 3AM Magazine *
In chronicling the lives of three generations of uniquely talented polar bears, the fantastically gifted Yoko Tawada has created an unforgettable meditation on celebrity, art, incarceration, and the nature of consciousness. Tawada is, far and away, one of my favourite writers, working today - thrilling, discomfiting, uncannily beautiful, like no one you have ever read before. Memoirs of a Polar Bear is Tawada at her best: humanity, as seen through the eyes of these bears, has never looks quite so stirringly strange. -- Laura van den Berg, author * Find Me *
Disconcerting and exhilaratingly strange. With a deft wave of her literary wand, Tawada dissolves the frontier between humans and animals, disorientating us so that we can be more properly oriented towards ourselves -- Charles Foster
Stunning... Inventive, well observed, peculiar and thought-provoking -- Daniel Hahn * Spectator *