Three Streets

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Three Streets by Yoko Tawada is a collection that offers three short narratives capturing various characters' experiences through enchanting and surreal urban landscapes. Each story provides a glimpse into the ordinary yet otherworldly life within the city, exploring themes of identity and existence with Tawada's characteristic blend of humour and imagination. The narratives invite readers to ponder the subtle mysteries of everyday life and the boundaries between reality and dreams.
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Format: Hardback
$3399
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you enjoy exploring the subtle intricacies of urban life through a poetic lens. It offers a series of interconnected tales that probe the intersections of cultural identity, language, and the surreal aspects of everyday existence. If you appreciate richly textured narratives filled with wit and whimsy, this might be the perfect read for you.

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Three Streets

Yoko Tawadaβ€”winner of the National Book Awardβ€”presents three terrific new ghost stories, each named after a street in Berlin

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The always astonishing Yoko Tawada here takes a walk on the supernatural side of the street. In Kollwitzstrasse, as the narrator muses on former East Berlin's new bourgeois health food stores, so popular with the wealthy young people, a ghost boy begs her to buy him the old-fashioned sweets he craves. She worries that sugar's still sugarβ€”but why lecture him, since he's already dead? Then white feathers fall from her head and she seems to be turning into a crane...

Pure white kittens and a great Russian poet haunt Majakowskiring: the narrator who reveres Mayakovsky's work is delighted to meet his ghost.

And finally, in Pushkin Allee, a huge Soviet-era memorial of soldiers comes to lifeβ€”and, "for a scene of carnage everything was awfully well-ordered."

Each of these stories glows, and opens up into new dimensions the work of this magisterial writer.

Series: Storybook ND Series

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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Three Streets by Yoko Tawada explores themes of language, identity, and historical memory through a series of stories set in Berlin. Reviewers highlight the book's blend of imagination and political engagement, noting its ability to transform urban landscapes into meditations on timeless human mysteries. Tawada's narratives are praised for their linguistic playfulness and depth, conjuring both charm and mystification in a succinct format.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780811229302

Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 01 November 2022

Country: United States

Imprint: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Contributors:

  • Translated by Margaret Mitsutani

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 15.0mm

Width: 160.0mm

Height: 239.0mm

Weight: 270g

Pages: 64

About the Author

Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, moved to Hamburg when she was twenty-two, and then to Berlin in 2006. She writes in both Japanese and German, and has published several booksβ€”stories, novels, poems, plays, essaysβ€”in both languages. She has received numerous awards for her writing including the Akutagawa Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Goethe Medal, and the National Book Award. New Directions publishes her story collectionsΒ Where Europe BeginsΒ (with a Preface by Wim Wenders) andΒ Facing the Bridge, as well her novelsΒ The Naked Eye,Β The Bridegroom Was a Dog,Β Memoirs of a Polar Bear,Β The Emissary,Β Scattered All over the Earth,Β Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel,Β Suggested in the Stars, and forthcoming in autumn 2025 isΒ Archipelago of the Sun, the final novel in herΒ ScatteredΒ trilogy. Β  Margaret MitsutaniΒ has lived in Japan since the mid-1970s and was a finalist for the National Book Award for her translation of Yoko Tawada’sΒ Scattered All Over the EarthΒ and winner of the National Book Award for her translation of Tawada’sΒ The Emissary. She also translates Japan’s 1994 Nobel Prize laureate Kenzaburo Oe.

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