Review by Booklist Review
National Book Award--winning polyglot Tawada--Tokyo-born, Berlin-domiciled--presents another succinct albeit dense rumination on what might be as simple as connections personal, literal, and historical. Columbia professor and translator Bernofsky reunites with Tawada for a fourth title, proving again to be extraordinarily adept at distilling Tawada's enigmatic, exacting, German-specific wordplay into an impressively gratifying anglophone experience. Originally published in 2020, Tawada's latest is presciently set in a pandemic-emerging Berlin. Her protagonist initially refers to himself as "the patient," struggling with leaving his "own four walls." He reveals a name, Patrik, possibly necessary for interfacing with (select) others. He recently walked out of his job as a research assistant for a professor of German literature, a self-denying narcissist who is particularly and vocally contemptuous of poet Paul Celan's work. That derision fueled Patrik's interest in Celan, inspiring him to register for a Celan conference in Paris. The organizers' query, What is your nationality?, asked in order to potentially secure funding for Patrik's participation, sends him on a spiraling search for identity as the German-born son of immigrants. His (maybe) chance meeting with Leo-Eric Fu, a "Trans-Tibetan" (a "Celan word," Patrik acknowledges), provides comforting friendship over language, literature, books, ancestors, and, of course, Celan. For patient readers, the strangers' developing relationship will be an esoteric, erudite lull before a brilliantly shocking revelation.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Tawada, whose novel The Emissary won the National Book Award for Translated Literature, delivers a poignant ode to artistic inspiration. Patrik, whom Tawada obliquely refers to as "the patient," is a literary researcher in Berlin whose love of art and objects often precludes his love for other people ("Even as a child, he called his toy tractor 'my colleague' and addressed his teddy bear as 'Professor' "). After the Covid-19 lockdown lifts, Patrik receives an invitation to speak at a conference on his hero, the poet Paul Celan, but he feels too overwhelmed to attend. At a café, he meets a mysterious man named Leo-Eric Fu, who knows his work and encourages him to reconsider. The men's lively conversations give the novel its charge as they discuss their shared love of Celan's ever-surprising word choices and experience the ease and thrill of a new connection, which opens Patrik's world in surprising ways ("A new friendship is my new form of long-distance travel. The airline is called Leo-Eric Fu and can fly much faster than any Lufthansa stork or the Indonesian divinity Garuda"). Readers will fall in love with this inventive and deeply human story. (July)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Japanese novelist Tawada, who lives in Berlin, observes a scholar's obsession with a poet. When does an interest become an obsession? A pathology? For the central character of Tawada's Covid-19-era novella, problems come to light after his interest becomes a job. Patrik--more often referred to as "the patient"--is a literature scholar in the midst of a mental breakdown. The object of Patrik's work, and of his obsession, is the 20th-century Romania-born Jewish poet Paul Celan (1920-1970). In his thoughts and conversations, Patrik references endless minutiae of the poet's work, including his preoccupations with Zen and Kabbalah. For Patrik, Celan takes on a similar mystical significance--no detail small enough to escape notice, nothing in life too mundane to connect back to his work. Patrik aspires to "give a lecture in which he revealed the significance of every single letter Celan used in his poetry," but he's hobbled by his mental illness, which largely prevents him from leaving home. When he does, the patient suffers absurd compulsions, such as an inability to turn right at intersections or to order at a café. After a server offers a drink, he complains: "Why grapefruit juice? The grapefruit available in Berlin is mostly imported from Israel. Celan didn't go to Israel until 1969." Although he insists that "Patrik is different from the patient," the line between them is undefined. The narrative embodies his alienation by fluctuating between first and third person and traversing fragmented timelines. What results is an inventive homage to modernist literature, wrapped up in an unexpectedly personal depiction of illness. Although the patient's problems appear to be psychological, they manifest in his physicality: "I ought to leave my body to its own devices, it can lead a healthier life without me," he says. "…I'll stop trying to read my partial, physical pain. Instead, I'll read Celan." A dark but charming portrait of a man unmoored by his love of an artist. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
