![]() ![]() ![]() I suspect I missed a lot but still enjoyed the central conceit and Tawada ’s reflections on what constitutes a city.Īnd, finally, Tawada reckons with the parallel wartime histories of her two homelands - Japan and Germany - in the brilliant closer, Puskin Allee, where the stone soldiers of a war memorial come to life and destroy everything in their path.ģ Streets by Yoko Tawada (Tr. It’s magical realist speculative fiction done right as people appear from pavement cracks, the city goes monochrome and the narrator despairs her own transformation and the little boy’s health.įans of the Russian Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky will delight in Majakowskiring, in which his ghost visits the street named after him. She meets the ghost of a little boy (or is he a robot?) who begs her to buy him his favourite sweets. The narrator of the first story, Kollwitzstrasse, seems to be turning into a crane. In these ten tales - two originally written in Japanese, eight in German - the reader moves through landscapes of fairy tales, family history, childhood memories, strange words and letters, dreams, and everyday reality. Each one is named after - and takes place in - a street in Berlin, the city Tawada has called home for almost twenty years. 'Where Europe Begins presents a collection of startling, innovative stories by Yoko Tawada. A novella in substance if not exactly in form, these conceptually linked stories make for a great primer/introduction/refresher to the sublime weirdness that is Yoko Tawada. ![]()
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