by Arlene Jaffe He tells Leonardo DaVinci exactly how to paint a portrait of his young wife. Her pose, her wardrobe, her hairstyle, even the background technique. He values the status and bragging rights of owning the masterpiece over the masterpiece itself. He is paying, after all. And it was his idea in the first place. So. Who is Francesco…
Translation from Russian, Polish and Japanese, Notes and Commentary by Roger Pulvers. THE YEAR 2020 was the year the world turned inward. We may have stayed at home, but this was a time to look deeply inside ourselves to find connections that we carry in us with all people all around the world. ACCLAIMED AUTHOR and translator Roger Pulvers recorded…
by Chuden Kabimo Translated from the Nepali by Ajit Baral On a day of earthquake and rain, a young man receives bad news. Ripden, his childhood friend, has been swept away by a landslide. He makes his way back to Malbung, the village of his birth. The memories come rushing back—memories of growing up together, of harsh teachers at school…
with other stories and poems by Miyazawa Kenji and works by Mori Ogai, Ishikawa Takuboku, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Dazai Osamu, and Inoue Hisashi. Translation from Japanese and Commentary by Roger Pulvers. MIYAZAWA KENJI remains not only Japan’s most popular and beloved writer of stories for children and adults but a prescient voice for this century on how we can survive and…
by Roger Pulvers Roger Pulvers has been writing fiction set in Japan for over fifty years. Now, for the first time, a collection of his very best short stories has been brought together in a single volume. Some of these stories, like the one that gives the collection its title, The Charter tells the story of a man who has…
Tanka by Takuboku Ishikawa Translated from the Japanese, Notes and Commentary by Roger Pulvers. Roger Pulvers' translations - with detailed notes and commentary - of Japan's greatest tanka poet, Takuboku Ishikawa, is now available here for the first time in this volume. Each tanka - a poem that in Japanese has thirty-one syllables - is a microcosm of the human…
by Horace Ho Daniel Fang’s mid-thirties are marked by the birth of his daughter and the death of a childhood friend. His daughter’s birth and infancy reminds him of his own boyhood, his friend’s death of the good times he had with back in their old neighbourhood. They were the kids from the wrong side of the temple, kids…
by Yeng Pway Ngon In the 1910s, thirteen-year-old Leong Ping Hung comes to Singapore from China to seek his fortune. Decades later, he is a lonely old man mourning his shattered dreams. His granddaughter Yu Sau struggles to take care of him while trying to make sense of her own life in a rapidly changing country. He speaks Cantonese, and…
by Roger Pulvers Half of Each Other takes place in Tokyo. It tells the story of Nick and Setsuko York, a once very fond married couple devoted to their adorable five-year-old daughter, Emi. Half of Each Other is the story of a woman and a man challenged by the shock of an overwhelming grief. Both are overcome by an immense…
by Monica Raszewski Born and raised in Australia, Martha longs to return to Nadwodom, in a country called Czawa, where her parents and family grew up. As she stumbles upon the works of Marion Porter, an Australian photographer who once photographed the countryside in Czawa, Martha's own journey to her family's homeland begins to unfurl. There, she meets her cousin,…
by Yan Ge English Pen Translates Award Set in a fictional town in West China, this is the story of the Duan-Xue family, owners of the lucrative chilli bean paste factory, and their formidable matriarch. As Gran’s eightieth birthday approaches, her middle-aged children get together to make preparations. Family secrets are revealed and long-time sibling rivalries flare up with renewed…
by Zhang Tianyi Translated from the Chinese by David Hull “Satiric brilliance and unusual comic verve.” — C. T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction In the 1930s, wartime Shanghai is a cosmopolitan metropolis where conmen and dance-hall girls mingle with refugees streaming in from the occupied areas. One of those refugees is Shi Zhaochang. Having read…
