Tag: #japan
Pregnancy Diary — Yoko Ogawa
The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain — Yoko Ogawa
Wabi Sabi — Sosuke Takahashi
It’s such a shame that a book that is telling us about the things that this book is telling us about could have been translated so poorly.
Or was Sosuke deliberately trying to make this book full of imperfection in some weird sense of ironic humour that i just don’t understand? Maybe even that’s lost in the translation.
Seriously, if you are going to write books in a language, be sure to have a complete grasp of that language before doing so, if not, then write in your own language and get someone who has a complete grasp and understanding of the language you want the book in to translate it for you.
The content has a lot of good stuff for the reader to consider, but it’s presentation through the woeful English writing just ruins everything this book talks about and makes one think that this writer does no practice what he preaches.
Sosuke’s Page
#japan #wabisabi #sosuketakahashi
The Maid — Yasutaka Tsutsui
We have a young woman who can read minds who works as a live in maid so that she doesn’t have to stay in any single place very long so that no one will guess her secret.
Thus begins our journey with Nanase as she works for and lives with 8 different Japanese families and ventures through their thoughts and discovers all their private truths.
As a lover of Japanese fiction i found this very interesting, and i can imagine that it must have been quite controversial in Japan when published and probably still is. Tsutsui essentially strips away the public veneer of polite and controlled Japanese people and society and suggests that there’s something very different lurking underneath: what are their private thoughts and lives really like, can we really take people at face value?
My first book by Tsutsui and i’m looking forward to reading a few more soon, which are already queued up on my Kindle.
