Title:: [[All The Lovers In The Night]]
Authors:: [[Mieko Kawakami]]
Tags:: #fiction #japaneseauthor
Read:: [[2022-05-15]]
## Editions
- Edition:: Europa Editions, first publication 2022
- Original Copyright:: 2011
- Pages:: 221
## Annotations
Stumbling upon [@kawakami_mieko](https://www.instagram.com/kawakami_mieko/) has added a lot of joy to my reading this year. Her latest English translation is as good as I hoped.
I kept thinking about how this book was written in 2011 and initially released only in Japan. Now eleven years later she is talking about the book again to a new audience, and I imagine it is difficult to talk about something from the past as though it were new — not just in trying to recall how you felt when you wrote it, but also dealing with how you feel about what you wrote so long ago.
But then a translation is always a book that is different than the original. And now I am thinking about how the act of reading even in a language you speak and understand is itself a translation that extends the author’s original words. Impossible to avoid.
Kudos to [@sambett](https://www.instagram.com/sambett/) and David Boyd for bringing her words into the English world.