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Text of the page (random words):
the novel is about the food they consumed for aoyama is passionate about it my gluttony isn t limited to exquisite or expensive foods either whenever i start craving something anything my stomach burns with this insatiable greed until i get my hands in whatever it is that s the monster in me p 83 i would say that the monster within her concerns more than food the homosexual undercurrent in this novel begins in a fairly subtle way and then becomes more and more pronounced i am not interested in reading about lesbian mentality especially when the writing itself is not very good there is no subtle nuance there is no real plot nor to me much of a redeeming point in taiwan travelogue ultimately it both bored and disappointed me read it if you want to read endless descriptions of food on every page along with aoyama s ever growing attraction to her translator how it won the national book award let alone a place on the international booker prize long list is beyond me at march 11 2026 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels international booker prize 2026 lin king yang shang zi the remembered soldier by anjet daanje translated from the dutch by david mckay international booker prize 2026 she leans over the retouching desk restoring other people s lives i think more than any other line this quotation encapsulates the remembered soldier yet how can one fragment of a sentence thoroughly impart the impact of this book it can t when i first saw the title and the cover on the international booker prize i balked i do not want to read a book about war i said to myself but the remembered soldier is about so much more than war it is about memory and identity being a soldier and perhaps most importantly of all being married an american author would come out and tell you everything boldly julienne found amand after searching for eight years in an asylum he d lost his memory but she claims to be his wife going home together they forge a life together that wouldn t be much of a story would it fortunately it is not nearly so simple the nuances must be carefully gleaned to solve this puzzle we must live through his memories or lack thereof and while relying on julienne s stories for background we wonder if perhaps she is lying just to keep him with her julienne says marriage is just like having children it s for life she says he s not a dog you can get rid of if you re not satisfied and her candor is so disarming that he almost wishes he really were her husband is he isn t he we don t know although we read of their life as a married couple he builds her a special table to retouch the photographs she takes as photography is their business he wakes up next to her in their shabby bed gets the coal picks the milk up from outside the door heats the water so she can wash in a thousand ways they are one and then he must pursue the vision he has of kathe in yellow and he dreams he finds not kathe but the war and he realizes that s what he s been looking for the whole time it s just that he gave his war a woman s name and her body is ravaged and cold and infertile and she s married to death don t be deceived read on my friend to find out who kathe is who julienne is who the remembered soldier is and as you re reading prepare to be mesmerized by writing the likes of which i have never known this is a book which will i never forget a mystery i would never have conceived on my own the quality of which i am unable to accurately describe in my opinion it is the only true contender for the international booker prize 2026 and most certainly ought to be declared the winner at march 11 2026 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels anjet daanje david mckay international booker prize 2026 february 19 2026 anticipating the international booker prize 2026 we re about to embark on an epic journey across the world s fiction traveling paths forged by the magic of translation i can t wait to share the treasures we discover natasha brown chair of the international booker prize 2026 judges the international booker prize will announce the long list of thirteen books on tuesday february 24 once again the shadow jury awaits this announcement with great anticipation what will this year bring us from the world of translated literature which author and which translator will equally share the 50 000 prize our shadow jury for 2026 is comprised of the following bibliophiles stu who is mostly found on bluesky here and on instagram here vivek is on instagram here david is writing the blog david s book world and can be found on bluesky here frances is found on bluesky here and on instagram here paul is on goodreads here jeremy is on bluesky here and on substack here marina is writing the blog finding time to write and can be found on bluesky here and me here at dolce bellezza and rarely on instagram here together we will read and review the books which are on the long list eagerly discussing amongst ourselves which we deem most worthy of the prize sometimes we agree with judges more often i dissent but agreeing with them or not in no way deters from the pleasure of reading books in translation and going through the door they open to broader understanding of the world in which we live although i am a reader and not a translator i feel much as one of the judges describes below to translate is to undertake a powerful act of generosity creativity and connection to ferry literature across from one language to another to forge kinship across distance nilanjana s roy international booker prize 2026 judge i cannot predict with any amount of certainty what will be revealed as a contender for the prize on february 24 however i am hopeful that a few of my favorite books in translation which have been published from may 1 2025 to april 30 2026 will be selected specifically i am hopeful to see these books click on the cover to go to the publisher as you can see my knowledge base is largely japanese but i have read all of these books and consider them to be exceptional we shall see what the judges have considered exceptional in the weeks to come at february 19 2026 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels international booker prize 2026 february 5 2026 sisters in yellow by mieko kawakami it s only because i have you guys that i can do any of this the power of sisters in yellow stunned me i could not read it quickly for the pages dwelt inside me with increasing heaviness as hana told her story my compassion for her grew such that i could hardly contain it where do you go when you have no one to turn to hana seemed to begin with a color yellow to be specific yellow was how all this started i met kumiko who had yellow in her name and she was the first one who s taught me about yellow bringing fortune and that was how i was able to leave higashimurayama and find my own place and my own life hana s mother has no capacity for parenting she works at a bar connecting with the men she finds there for brief interludes leaving hana on her own hana must be the responsible one in the family so it is easy for her to leave with kimiko a friend of her mother s in search of a better home kimiko and hana set up a bar which hana names lemon and soon they have more money than hana has ever known the new adults in her life kimiko and her friends show her ways to survive that make her feel she is thriving until the mounting dangers and fear show her that her life is really crumbling the despair that hana feels is heart wrenching what does she have no career no family id no education how do people go on living people i passed on the street people reading newspapers in the cafes or drinking booze in the izakaya eating ramen going out with friends to make memories people coming from somewhere going elsewhere laughing raging crying people who live for today and would wake up and do the same tomorrow how did they do it i knew they had honest jobs earned honest money but embarrassed i didn t understand was how they d first obtained the qualifications to live within that honesty how had they made it to that side i wanted someone to tell me my nights were sleepless filled with worry tossing and turning and my thoughts grew distorted so much so that i almost called my mother but hana s mother can t help her and when hana s friends suggest that kimiko and the other adults in their circle have taken advantage of her hana cannot help but feel betrayed i d always believed kimiko had saved me and the more i got to know her the more i became convinced that she couldn t live without me either that there was no other way that was why i d been so desperate but i was wrong this is the crux of the novel i believe did kimiko take advantage of hana or as one of my principals said when i expressed disgust over a parent s behavior was she simply doing the best that she could what ultimately matters is how hana faces the reality of her life she cannot answer for how she has been treated she can only answer for how she will in turn treat others as we all one day will do at february 05 2026 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels hitomi yoshio laurel taylor mieko kawakami january 21 2026 the devotion of suspect x by keigo higashino sometimes all you had to do was exist in order to be someone s savior the last time i met ishigami he presented me with a mathematical conundrum he said it s a famous one the p np problem basically it asks whether it s more difficult to think of a solution to a problem yourself or to ascertain if someone else s answer to the same problem is correct is there anything like a good mystery i mean a really well thought out puzzle resembling a mathematical problem which begs to be solved such is the mystery which higashino gives us in this novel but maybe the most important part of the novel isn t about who committed a crime when ishigami comes forth with the confession that he has killed yasuko s ex husband the whole point of the novel suddenly becomes clear it was never about who committed the crime it was about the devotion of one of the suspects in fact perhaps this should be labeled more of a desperate love story than one of murder although there are an abundance of clues and curiosity about who will discover the truth the detective or the physicist these aren t the most important elements the most important element is ishigami s character he is a lonely teacher at the high school working there only for the money as his passion is solving mathematical problems bur his passion extends to his neighbor yasuko as well i am gobsmacked by higashino s cleverness he masqueraded a tale of devotion as one of murder and had me sidetracked all along the devotion of suspect x is as brilliant a thriller as i have ever read at january 21 2026 10 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels keigo higashino january 18 2026 sunday salon life is sometimes stranger than fiction this week one of my sons s grandfathers turned 94 the other grandfather died you can t make it up sometimes i m reading a japanese novel and i think this could never have happened never and then i look at my life and think but it does my husband took the photo of my mother and i with my father on january 15 i am in the black shirt she is in teal people often confuse us since i am silver now he is strong and no one is more amazed than i am if you have been around my blog for a while you may know of the prayers i ve asked for him this man with 34 stents in his heart he even had several open heart surgeries before stents were placed if there s one thing i learned it is do not worry i could have saved myself thirty years of anxiety if i had obeyed that philosophy in january 14 my son texted me that he s just learned his paternal grandfather had died of a heart attack in ohio quite suddenly he had woken up with chest pain driven himself and his wife to the hospital and suffered the attack which took his life my son had to go to one grandfather s funeral while missing the other grandfather s birthday our days are not in our hands i sprained my foot quite badly and so i have been reading on the loveseat under the window in the dining room and gaining weight it s really a lovely time over here but i have finished three books for the japanese literature challenge 19 two other books which were not and am now starting the devotion of suspect x by keigo higashino which lesley must have sent me ten years ago she wasn t a fan but she knew of my passion for japanese literature and sent it over i am a great fan of higashino so i am going to devour it today we will also watch the bears in the playoffs against the rams those poor rams coming to play in chicago temperatures when they are used to los angeles imagine that the bears have made it this far it s been a long time since i watched them win the super bowl when i lived in germany in 1986 find more sunday salon links here at january 18 2026 22 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest january 17 2026 best offer wins by marisa kashino it always amazes me to see the books that are selected for reese s book club or oprah s or the good morning america book club they are nothing if not trite or poorly written at least marisa kashino seems to use her experience as a reporter and her japanese american ethnicity to support her novel best offer wins when i put this book on hold at the library i actually thought it would be suitable for the japanese literature challenge 19 it is not instead it is a novel that resembles the devil wears prada in that we have a young professional woman aspiring to achieve more than she has in fact margot borders on having a psychosis so eager is she to have a house and a baby but first the house when she hears of a home which will soon be listed she stalks the owner getting herself invited to the owner s home for dinner and consequently ruining any chance of buying it before it hits the market when her ruse is uncovered but her plans to obtain this house continue to unfold each more bizarre than the next until we are left with an outrageously tragic scenario that further spoiled the whole plot with its unbelievable overly dramatic nature maybe it s because i already have a house maybe it s because i m not materialistic maybe it s because i know that things do not a person make but i am shocked by the accolades that this book has received from alex michaelides for one because personally i cannot wait to return to a piece of true literature and i have some advice do not get sucked into reading what celebrities endorse it s has never been worth the effort for me at january 17 2026 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels marisa kashino january 16 2026 snow country by yasunari kawabata part two he stood ...