‘They were fascinated / by what they seemed to have contained.’
It was — what? — the triumph of hope
over experience. But what triumph
(and what hope)? The continued display
of a kind of unreasonable fortitude,
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘Men believed without a doubt that rape was just a variety of sex. That was the world in which Narumi and her classmates lived.’
Mieko Kawakami, translated by Louise Heal Kawai & Hitomi Yoshio.
‘First prize went to the dog school principal, who of course had submitted a cartoon dog.’
Three stories by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Ted Goossen.
‘Even if the children don’t understand, they know. Everything they managed to forget during the day comes back.’
Masatsugu Ono, translated by David Boyd.
‘Sounds like rain If I go to the window,
it could easily turn into bullets or rabbits.
Which one is right?
Should I go with my eyes or my ears?’
Toshiko Hirata, translated by Eric Hyett and Spencer Thurlow.
‘Hey, Nagaoka, wanna start a new cult with me?’
Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori.
‘Living on money from the government, excused our duties and our liabilities, reducing our wants to eating and sleeping and what in the eighteenth century may have passed for exercise, the alderman’s stroll.’
‘For all its flimsiness, the cage takes itself terribly seriously, restricting access, glorying in the name of Fatherland.’
Peter Stamm on the oldest barber in Switzerland, and Michael Hofmann on translating Peter Stamm.
‘Lines collect for years, but once in a while these lines meet up, and wink at other lines, go tangoing and make out, and a baby gets born – which is to say a stanza or if I am lucky the whole poem.’
‘I would peel wrappers off sandwiches, remove noodles from their boxes, fry up meat before any authorities had the chance to track me and my bounty down.’
