Latest news with #LisaHofmann-Kuroda
Straits Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Book review: Natsuo Kirino tackles ethics and morality in surrogacy tale Swallows
By Natsuo Kirino, translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda Fiction/Canongate Books/Paperback/334 pages/$29.09 The rather enigmatic one-word English title of Natsuo Kirino's novel fails to capture the nuances of the Japanese title. First published as Tsubame Wa Modotte Konai in 2022 and made into a television series in 2024, the work's full name is more accurately translated as The Swallows Don't Return.
South China Morning Post
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
From Hiroshima to Fukushima, Yuko Tsushima's novel Wildcat Dome is strangely riveting
Japan's three historic nuclear events – the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II and the 2011 nuclear plant meltdowns in Fukushima – form a key backdrop for Wildcat Dome, a novel by Yuko Tsushima. Advertisement Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda's English translation of the book by the Kawabata and Tanizaki awards-winning writer is now out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and goes on sale this month. As befits its catastrophic theme, the writing rambles – although intentionally and in a delightfully mesmerising style – meandering from a description of a scene to a dialogue, only to be interrupted by a sound, an image or an action, like memories of a dream or nightmare. Among the main characters are children born to Japanese women and American servicemen, who grow up in an orphanage. They embody the human costs of war, and the suffering of living in a discriminatory society. The cover of Hofmann-Kuroda's English translation of Tsushima's novel. Photo: FSG via AP The layering of the subplots involving radiation and racism, as well as personal conflict, leads always to the big question: why? Advertisement
