‘Mother dumped my father,’ a friend of my wife was saying one day, ‘all because of a pair of shorts.’
I had to ask. ‘A pair of shorts?’
‘I know it sounds strange,’ she said, ‘because it is a strange story.’


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‘Please, I beg you. If I do not buy lederhosen now, I will never buy lederhosen.’
‘Mother dumped my father,’ a friend of my wife was saying one day, ‘all because of a pair of shorts.’
I had to ask. ‘A pair of shorts?’
‘I know it sounds strange,’ she said, ‘because it is a strange story.’
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‘I alone know a running stream
that is recovery partly and dim sweat
of a day-fever’
A poem by Rowan Evans.
‘Humour is a thread we hang onto. It punctures through the fog of guilt.’
Momtaza Mehri in conversation with Warsan Shire.
‘Something shifted in me that night. A small voice in my head said, maybe you can make a way for yourself as a poet here, too.’
Mary Jean Chan in conversation with Andrew McMillan.
‘There was to be an exhibition. There were lots of pictures like his, apparently – of waiters, pastry cooks, valets, bellboys.’
An essay by Jason Allen-Paisant from Granta 159: What Do You See?
‘I have started to see that nothing is itself’
A poem by Jason Allen-Paisant from Granta 154: I’ve Been Away for a While.
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and he has been the recipient of a host of international awards and honours including the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. He has also received honorary doctorates from the University of Liège and Princeton University.
Photograph © Elena Seibert
Alfred Birnbaum’s translations include Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Natsuki Ikezawa’s A Burden of Flowers and The Navidad Affair, and Miyuki Miyabe’s All She Was Worth. His co-translation of Murakami’s Underground won the 2001 Sawagawa Foundation Translation Award, and his co-translation of Nu Nu Yi’s Smile as They Bow was short-listed for the 2007 Man Asia Literature Award.
More about the translator →‘That was the setup for the review I wrote about this imaginary record.’ Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.
‘What I’m talking about is a different sea, and different mountains.’ Haruki Murakami walks to his hometown after the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995.
‘I looked up at the sky. A few grey cotton chunks of cloud hung there, motionless.’
‘There are times when I think I came to literary translation just so I could keep my many homes close to hand.’
Julia Sanches and Mara Faye Lethem on translating Catalan into English.
‘Hara had stumbled on a kind of play, as if they were sisters left alone by their parents for the first time to explore the different ways a day could be deconstructed.‘
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