![]() ![]() And indeed, usually something is sacrificed by text and/or author when moving between languages and in fitting that translated text into the destination language/culture. We’ve all encountered books, in translation, where after reading them we are left with the feeling that “something is missing something was lost”. Review: Banana Yoshimoto’s N.P., for its small size and brevity, is an insightful, multi-layered novel exploring the complications and consequences that the act of translation can impose on not only a text but on personal and cultural identity. ![]() Over the course of an astonishing summer, she will discover the truth behind the ninety-eighth story-and she will come to believe that “everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.” Haunted by Shoji’s death, Kazami is inexorably drawn to three young people whose lives are intimately bound to the late writer and his work. ![]() But the book, itself titled N.P., may never be published in his native Japan: each translator who takes up the ninety-eighth story chooses death too-including Kazami Kano’s boyfriend, Shoji. In N.P., Banana Yoshimoto’s enchanting novel of uncanny subtlety, style, magic, and mystery, a celebrated Japanese writer has committed suicide, leaving behind a collection of stories written in English. ![]() Genre: Literary Fiction, 21st Century Japanese Literatureįormat: Paperback 215 pages, 978-0-80212-442-5 $16.00 ![]()
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