Facing the Bridge

From Japan to Vietnam to Amsterdam to the Canary Islands, these three tales by master storyteller Yoko Tawada float between cultures, identities and the dreamwork of the imagination.

Amo, an African kidnapped to Europe as a boy, and Tamao, a Japanese exchange student in Germany, live in different countries but are being followed by the same shadow; Kazuko, a young professional tourist, is lured to Vietnam by a mysterious postcard; on the Canary Islands, a nameless translator battles a banana grove and a series of Saint Georges...

These three tales by master storyteller Yoko Tawada cross cultures and histories with a sensuous playfulness. In Facing the Bridge, obsession becomes delight as the reader is whisked into a world where identities flicker and shift in a never-ending balance.

Review

"'Tawada writes beautifully about unbearable things'" -- Sara Baume

"'Magnificently strange'" -- Rivka Galchen

"'Every Yoko Tawada novel pulls the ground out from under us, but gives us new senses in return'" -- Madeleine Thien

"'Tawada disrupts our perception and reveals the terror and beauty of our world as we get lost in it, and regain our footing through reading her novels'" -- Kit Fan

"'What propels Tawada's stories is the unassailable logic of dreams and fairy tales, coupled with verbal energy. Tawada's images resonate simultaneously on different levels'" ― Village Voice

About the Author

Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, moved to Hamburg when she was twenty-two, and then to Berlin in 2006. She writes in both Japanese and German, and has published several books-stories, novels, poems, plays, essays-in both languages. She has received numerous awards for her writing including the Akutagawa Prize, the Kleist-Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Goethe Medal. New Directions publishes her story collections Where Europe Begins (with a Preface by Wim Wenders) and Facing the Bridge, and her novel of Catherine Deneuve obsession, The Naked Eye.

MARGARET MITSUTANI was born in Pennsylvania. She has translated the works of Oe Kenzaburo, Kakuta Mitsuyo and Hayashi Kyoko.