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Harvard Square Book Circle discusses Yoko Tadawa’s The Emissary

August 26, 2019 | 7:00 pm

Free

The Harvard Square Book Circle, our in-store book club, discusses Yoko Tadawa’s The Emissary, translated by Margaret Mitsutani—a breathtakingly light-hearted meditation on mortality, and winner of the 2018 National Book Award in Translated Literature.

About The Emissary

Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient―frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism. Yoshiro concentrates on nourishing Mumei, a strangely wonderful boy who offers “the beauty of the time that is yet to come.”

A delightful, irrepressibly funny book, The Emissary is filled with light. Yoko Tawada, deftly turning inside-out “the curse,” defies gravity and creates a playful joyous novel out of a dystopian one, with a legerdemain uniquely her own.

Details

Date:
August 26, 2019
Time:
7:00 pm
Cost:
Free
Event Category:
Website:
http://www.harvard.com/event/harvard_square_book_circle_90/

Organizer

Harvard Book Store
Phone:
6176611515
Email:
info@harvard.com
Website:
harvard.com

Venue

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138 United States
+ Google Map
Website:
www.harvard.com

Did You Know?

Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.