'Volcano' by Shusaku Endo (Review)

Of the three books I received for review from Peter Owen Publishers last year, there was one that I immediately earmarked for reading during January in Japan.  Shusaku Endo is fast becoming one of my favourite J-Lit writers, and having heard good things about today's book, I was sure it wouldn't disappoint.  Luckily enough, this was Endo at his explosive (!) best...

*****
Volcano (translated by Richard A. Schuchert) introduces us to Junpei Suda, an old man about to retire from his position as section chief at a Kyushu weather observatory.  The town he lives in is overlooked by the (fictional) volcano Akadake, and ever since arriving in the town fifteen years earlier, Suda has been obsessed by the mountain which, literally and metaphorically, casts a shadow over his life.

Asked by a local councillor and businessman to give assurances that the volcano is unlikely to erupt again (and thus endanger a hotel project he is planning), Suda is able to trot out the results of his (pseudo-scientific) research.  Comparing himself to Akadake, he believes that they are both moving closer and closer towards death.  However, what if the research he has poured his heart into turns out to be wrong?

You'd be forgiven for thinking that this is the set-up for a Hollywood disaster movie, but that is most certainly not the case.  This is J-Lit, and the volcano is not here to destroy the city but to act as a symbolic backdrop to Suda's story.  The words of the professor whose research Suda is attempting to carry on compare the volcano's actions to human life:

"What a mount of heartache it is.  A volcano resembles human life.  In youth it gives rein to passions, and burns with fire.  It spurts out lava.  But when it grows old, it assumes the burden of those past evil deeds, and it turns quiet as a grave.  You younger man can hardly fathom the pathos of this mountain."
p.27 (Peter Owen, 2012)

Suda swallows the professor's opinions whole - which makes it even more upsetting when the volcano shows unexpected signs of life in its old age...

This side of the story, one in which the ailing old man, loathed by his family and quickly forgotten by his colleagues, has to face up to his life's shortcomings, would be interesting enough.  However, this strand is contrasted with another story, one in which Durand, an apostate Catholic priest, begins to meddle in the affairs of his former parish.  The new priest attempts to treat the Frenchman with respect, but Durand has no interest in fitting in.  Having lost his faith in the work he was sent to do in Japan, he intends to spend his final few hours proving that there is no point in spreading Christianity among people who are unable to understand it.  As he says to the shocked priest:

"...it's because there isn't a single one of them that pays any attention to that enigma in the Japanese heart which makes their work completely sterile."
"Give me an example, Durand San.  What are you talking about?"
"For example...," Durand grinned again.  "For example, among the Japanese people there seems to be absolutely no concept of sin." (p.44)

Durand's views on sin and shame lead him to tempt a member of the congregation into behaving improperly.  After all, if you don't really feel guilty, where's the harm...

Suda and Durand end up in neighbouring rooms in a hospital, and there are many things which connect them.  Both are on their last legs; both are facing massive disappointment after the failure of their life's work; both are a burden on (and an embarrassment to) the people closest to them.  There is one major difference though - Durand would like nothing more than to see Akadake wipe the city off the face of the earth...

Volcano isn't overly long (only about 180 pages), but it packs a lot of ideas and imagery into its story.  Akadake looms over the town and the novel, but we don't really need to know whether it is going to erupt or not.  It represents everything that affects our lives, the ideas we are unable to escape from, despite living the fantasy of a 'free' existence.  Suda, typically, attempts to ignore the signs he sees on his trips to the mountain, just as he deliberately ignores the growing coldness of his wife and children.  Durand though attempts to fight against his 'volcano' with his petty attempts at corruption.

All in all, this is another success from a wonderful writer.  Combining the Christian elements of Silence with the more contemporary setting of When I Whistle, Volcano shows that Endo rarely fails to deliver with his novels.  I'd certainly recommend this one, and I'm already thinking about which of his I can get next.  Any suggestions will be gratefully received :)

More Nichi-Yōbi News

Over at the January in Japan blog, it's time again for the weekly news round-up, Nichi-Yōbi News.  You'll find some reviews, a new J-Lit Giant, news about some recent J-Lit success and a couple of links - just because :)  Ikimasen ka?

'Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words' by Jay Rubin (Review)

Jay Rubin is an American academic who is well known for his translations of Japanese literature, including works by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Natsume Soseki.  However, he is undoubtedly best known in the west for his work on some of Haruki Murakami's back catalogue, including Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and After Dark.  Not content with just translating Murakami's fiction however, Rubin, who knows the writer quite well, decided to write a book about the man and his creations - and a good one it is too...

*****
Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words is the next logical step for Murakami fans to take when they've burned through all of his translated works.  It's a book which gives an insight into the author's life while also shedding some light on what it is he is actually trying to say in his writing (something which has puzzled me for a long time...).

We follow Murakami through his less-than-stellar school days and his riot-interrupted time at university, finding out about his early marriage and his years running a jazz club along the way.  He was never a typical Japanese writer, showing little interest in his native literature or culture, preferring instead to experience American novels and jazz (which will come as little surprise to anyone who has read any of his books).  Eventually though, he decided to try his hand at writing - and the rest, as they say, is history...

As interesting as Murakami's life is though, what we're really here for is the guided tour through his books, and Rubin is just the man for the job.  He carefully takes the reader through assorted novels, stories and non-fiction pieces in chronological order (which isn't always the order, or the format, they appeared in overseas), explaining the thought processes behind the books and highlighting connections between the various works - some obvious, others not quite so easy to spot at first glance.

Rubin shows how Murakami was the first of a new breed of writers, one who (unlike his predecessors) was in tune with the new Japan:

"...Murakami has been called the first writer completely at home with the elements of American popular culture that permeate present-day Japan.  He has also been seen as the first genuinely "post-post-war writer", the first to cast off the "dank, heavy atmosphere" of the post-war period and to capture in literature the new Americanised mood of lightness." p.17 (Vintage Books, 2005)

As well as this difference in style, Murakami was also a literary outsider in other ways.  He was not a member of any literary group (very unusual for a Japanese author), and his books were initially frowned upon by such heavyweights as Kenzaburo Oe.

However, this difference was not quite as marked as first appears.  His stories, with their typical unresolved endings, are compared to traditional Japanese writers such as Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, and he is also the latest in a long line of writers to enrich Japanese literature through his work in translation (following in the footsteps of Tsubouchi and Futabatei!).  In fact, for those not overly familiar with Murakami, his work as a literary translator may come as a bit of a shock.  According to Rubin, he has translated dozens of American novels and short story collections and has been responsible for a resurgence in the popularity of American literature in Japan.

For me, the most useful part of the book though was the focus on themes in Murakami's work.  Rubin concentrates very heavily on Murakami's handling of the subject of memory and its unreliability, claiming that:

"Perhaps no other writer concerned with memory and the difficulty of reclaiming the past - not Kawabata, not even Proust - has succeeded as well as Murakami in capturing the immediacy of the experience of déjà vu." p.60

While I'm a little dubious about that boast (and in certain blogs I frequent, I'm sure them's fighting words...), it's true that the writer is fascinated with the way we see the world and the impossibility of ever knowing the truth about the past and other people.

Rubin also devotes a lot of time to Murakami's concept of 'the other place', the space occupied by the things that are not present in our current location.  Whether it refers to the psyche, an afterlife or another dimension, it's ever-present in Murakami's writing, and many of his protagonists are trying to bridge the gap between here and 'the other place'.  How?  Well, some of you may have noticed that there are a fair few wells, tunnels and corridors in his books...

While I could misinterpret Rubin's ideas all day, I think I'll leave the analysis there.  Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words is an excellent book and one I enjoyed immensely.  Still, there are a few issues I'd like to quickly point out.  If you haven't really read a lot of Murakami, I'm not sure that this is for you.  Part of the fun lies in recognising the stories Rubin is discussing - and there are a lot of them.  I was able to frequently refer to the many books on my Murakami shelf to jog my memory and spent a lot of time rereading certain short stories.  If all you've read is Norwegian Wood, leave this one for the future.

Another possible issue is that it doesn't always pay to see your heroes up close, warts and all.  On the whole, Rubin (a close friend) paints a very favourable picture of the writer (and any mention of his wife Yoko verges on hagiography), but I was a little troubled by a couple of images.  For one thing, his style of writing appears a little haphazard, and he rarely seems to know where he's going with the books he's writing.  He could also be accused of writing for the sake of writing as his output is truly phenomenal (and covers all kinds of areas and genres).  For a fan of translated fiction like me though, perhaps the most worrying revelation is that he is comfortable with translations of translations, preferring his work to get to readers quickly, even if it isn't quite what he wrote in the first place...

Still, nobody's perfect, and anyone expecting perfection deserves all the disappointments they get.  Readers who set their bar a little lower will have great fun with this book - just don't blame me if you get hooked on hunting down translated rarities of Murakami's work...

*****

...speaking of which, I have a little story to tell you ;)

I recently saw a comment on the January in Japan blog where someone signed up for the challenge, and (like a good host) I popped over to check out the blog.  The blogger was Carola of brilliant years, and she had just published a post - one in which a link was given to a translation of a rare Murakami work.  It's called The Sheep Man's Christmas, and while the quality of the translation (and the formatting) may leave a little to be desired, it's still a fun piece of writing with that inimitable Murakami sense of humour.

I was very happy with my unexpected Christmas present, and I'd urge you all to have a look too :)

'Some Prefer Nettles' by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (Review)

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki is definitely a writer worthy of my J-Lit Giants series, one of the best-known Japanese authors of the twentieth century.  His most famous novel is possibly The Makioka Sisters, but today's offering, Some Prefer Nettles, would be up there among his best.  As well as being an excellent read, today's choice has one more point (for me) in its favour - once again, we're heading back to the region where I spent my time in Japan...

*****
Some Prefer Nettles (translated by Edward Seidensticker) is set in the Kansai region of Japan, the gritty polar opposite of the cultured Kanto area around Tokyo.  The story is constructed around Kaname and Misako, a married couple who, for a number of years, have been husband and wife in little more than name.  As the unhappy couple attempt to pluck up the courage to sever their ties for good, Kaname starts to regret the effect the divorce will have on his relationship with his father-in-law, Hideo.

Hideo has completely surrendered to the alien Kansai culture and is enjoying his old age in Kyoto, along with a young lover who has taken the place of his dead wife.  O-hisa, a doll-like classical Kyoto beauty, is very different from the Tokyo-bred Misako, but Kaname starts to wonder whether that is really such a bad thing after all.  Like his father-in-law, Kaname begins to see that new is not necessarily better...

Some Prefer Nettles is a short, semi-autobiographical novel with two main focuses.  The first is the problem of working through, or ending, an unhappy marriage.  Kaname lost interest in sex with Misako soon after the start of the marriage, and his inability to feel anything for her has caused her heartbreak - and driven her to take a lover (with Kaname's blessing...).  Yet the hapless husband is still undecided about forcing the issue of a divorce as he's not convinced that love and sex are vital to a happy marriage:

"Who, looking at them now, could know that they were not really husband and wife?  Not even the servants, who saw them every day, seemed yet to have suspected it.  And indeed weren't they husband and wife?  He thought of how she helped him even with his underwear and socks.  Marriage was after all not only a matter of the bedroom.  He had known women enough in his life who ministered to that particular need.  But surely the reality of marriage lay as much in these other small ministrations.  Indeed, he could almost feel that through them marriage was revealing itself in its most basic, its most classical form, and he could think of Misako as an entirely satisfactory wife..."
pp.12-13 (Vintage, 2001)

Anyone who thinks that Kaname is a satisfactory husband though is very wide of the mark.  While he may appear generous and cultured, especially in comparison with his rough-and-ready father-in-law, he is actually an extremely cruel man.  The more the reader learns about his 'marriage', and the more we reflect upon his treatment of Misako, the more loathsome he becomes.  Having lost all sexual desire for his wife, he simply goes on sleeping in the same room as her, listening to her tears night after night for years, virtually forcing her to seek affection in the arms of another man (while he runs off after Eurasian prostitutes...).

If he could only take some initiative and instigate a divorce, he might salvage some dignity.  However, he is unable to actually bring himself to make a decision which may disrupt his comfortable life, shying away from the thought of a scene:

"He was guided by a Tokyo-bred sense of how to comport himself, and with his dislike for the unrestrained Osaka drama, he could only with revulsion see himself as the contorted, weeping principal in a scene from an Osaka melodrama." p.45

As the novel ends, we are no closer to a resolution - which is very in character...

As mentioned above, Tanizaki used this novel to work through some issues in his own life.  He too divorced his wife, virtually passing her on to a close friend.  While this may seem a little off to non-Japanese, he did at least ensure that his wife would be provided for in future, with a new husband he knew and trusted...

The second issue is his own experience with the Kanto - Kansai (Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe) divide.  While some of his characters believe the Tokyo way of life to be more refined and elegant than the mercantile Osaka lifestyle, Kaname gradually comes to see the honesty in the traditional Kansai customs, something which has been lost in the east.  Like Misako, Tokyo is described as having been coated with a layer of refinement and civilisation - albeit, one which only runs so deep...

Some Prefer Nettles is an excellent read, a slow-moving, psychologically-intense work (although if pages of descriptions of puppet shows are not your thing, you may disagree).  In Kaname, Tanizaki has created a 'superfluous hero' worthy of being the successor to Futabatei's Bunzo Utsumi (although he's a little nastier than the hero of Ukigumo).  There is no real ending, and the loose ends remain anything but tied up - but that's the point.  Tanizaki himself said that if you've understood the characters, you'll know how the story ends.  Read it for yourself, and see if you agree :)

Introducing Nichi-Yōbi News

Over on the January in Japan blog, today marks the start of a regular feature, Nichi-Yōbi News.  Every Sunday this month, I'll be rounding up the news from the challenge and pointing you all in the direction of any interesting items I find on the web - please check it out :)

December 2012 Wrap-Up

My last wrap-up post of 2012 is a fairly quiet one, but it's just the calm before the storm.  January is going to be very busy around these parts...

*****
Total Books Read: 14
Year-to-Date: 125

New: 14

Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 9
Review Copies: 3

From the Library: 0

On the Kindle: 2 (1 review copy)

Novels: 9
Novellas: 1

Short Stories: 2
Non-Fiction: 2

Non-English Language: 10 (8 Japanese, 1 Italian, 1 Faroese)

In Original Language: 0

Murakami Challenge: 1 (1/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 1 (7/12)

Australian Women Writers Challenge: 1 (6/10)

Japanese Literature Challenge 6: 8 (14/1) 

*****
Books reviewed in December were:

1) Long Days by Maike Wetzel
2) A History of the World by Andrew Marr
3) The Old Man and his Sons by Heðin Brú
4) Frozen Dreams by Wahei Tatematsu
5) My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
6) Accabadora by Michela Murgia
7) The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Tony's Turkey for December is:

- Michela Murgia's Accabadora

While this tale of an old woman and her adopted daughter in a Sardinian village started well, it really went downhill in the second half of the book.  My fourth turkey for 2012, but (as you may already be aware) not quite bad enough to be the golden turkey ;)

Tony's Recommendations for December are:
-  Heðin Brú's The Old Man and His Sons
and Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career

I loved both of these books, and I was really struggling to separate them for the final spot on my best-of list for 2012.

So I didn't ;)

*****
The end of another year, a time to relax and think about what the next year of reading will hold...  Well, it would be, if only there wasn't a little something called January in Japan in full swing!  I've been looking forward to my first hosting event for a while now - hopefully it'll be a success :)

'Ukigumo' ('The Drifting Cloud') by Shimei Futabatei & Marleigh Ryan (Review)

I've been interested in Japanese literature for a while now, but I feel that the interest may have got a little stronger over the past couple of years.  This has left me wondering if there is a line between interest and obsession - at what point does your harmless pastime start to become a little too serious?

All of which coincidentally brings me to today's book, a 1960s translation of (and commentary on) a nineteenth-century Japanese novel, one which is extremely difficult to find, meaning I had to buy it second-hand and have it shipped from the US. I suspect that if there is a line, it may just have been crossed...

*****
Ukigumo (The Drifting Cloud) by Shimei Futabatei, translated by Marleigh Ryan, is often described as the first modern Japanese novel.  The hero of the piece is Bunzo Utsumi, a civil servant living with his uncle's family in Tokyo while saving up money to establish his own house with his mother.  While his aunt, Omasa, is not overly keen on Bunzo, his uncle intends to marry off his daughter, Osei, to her young relative, and the young couple are slowly working their way towards an understanding.

That is, until Bunzo unexpectedly loses his job, a victim of office politics.  Now his aunt is free to convey her displeasure (especially as his uncle is almost permanently away on business), and her attitude is bound to rub off on Osei.  Enter, at this point, Noboru Honda, a former colleague of Bunzo's who has managed to keep his job.  In fact, thanks mainly to his sycophantic attentions to his boss, he has even managed to get a raise - and now he is turning his attentions towards Osei...

If Bunzo could only pull himself together, he would easily be able to master the situation.  Sadly, he is the very model of indecision, brooding over his unjust treatment in his room, while Honda works his charms on both Omasa and Osei.  Although Bunzo is a much better person than any of the people surrounding him, he is repeatedly humiliated - what's more, rather than admitting defeat and moving out, he stays in his room, hoping that Osei will change her mind.

By the end of novel, he has burnt most of his bridges, with none of the other main characters willing to talk to him.  Yet still, as the story comes to its conclusion, Bunzo harbours hopes of a reconciliation and reinstatement to his old position.  At which point, the average reader may well decide that he deserves everything he gets...

*****
Ukigumo is an interesting story, but it's not amazing by modern standards (and some people argue that it was never really finished...), so you might think I regret buying it.  Nothing could be further from the truth - this was a great buy.  Why?  Because the actual novel is accompanied by Marleigh Ryan's extensive 200-page commentary, which contains an extended biography, background information about Meiji-era Japan and the creation of Ukigumo.  Wait, come back - that's a good thing...

In what is suspiciously reminiscent of a PhD thesis, Ryan introduces the reader to Futabatei, but also to his friend Shoyo Tsubouchi, a minor novelist who became a much bigger name in the field of literary theory.  Tsubouchi was one of the first Japanese theorists to champion foreign styles of writing, demanding that Japanese writers pay far more attention to characterisation than had previously been the case.  His ideas greatly influenced Futabatei, who ended up writing the style of novel Tsubouchi himself was unable to manage.

Tsubouchi was also responsible for starting Futabatei off on a career in literary translation.  The young writer had studied Russian at university and was the first to translate certain classic stories into Japanese, including many by Turgenev.  This double career as writer and translator (a situation copied by later Japanese writers - including a certain Haruki Murakami...) enabled Futabatei to draw on these Russian realist influences, especially the idea of the 'superfluous hero', when he came to write Ukigumo.  And his translation work would also help him with another rather tricky problem...

...you see, for me one of the most fascinating aspects of the commentary was Futabatei's struggle to create a variety of language which would suit the style of literature he was hoping to write.  Up to this time, Japanese had a very formal Chinese-influenced writing style which was totally unsuitable for modern literature; however, the only other option was the spoken language which, as well as being considered unworthy of literature, was divided into mutually unintelligible dialects.  In order to drag the Japanese novel out of the middle ages, and create something which measured up to the Russian works he loved, not only did Futabatei have to persuade readers to accept characterisation over a sensational plot, he also had to codify a new style of literary language.  Now that is a tough task.

Once you understand the issues the writer faced in creating Ukigumo, its importance in modern Japanese literature becomes a little more understandable.  By itself, the novel is merely a pleasant read.  However, when combined with Marleigh Ryan's excellent supplement (and the fascinating footnotes), it becomes a whole lot more, fully deserving of the title bestowed upon it.

While I'm very happy that I decided to buy this book, an excellent addition to my burgeoning J-Lit library, I'm not sure it's for everyone.  Before you start trawling through second-hand book sites, perhaps you should first ask yourself which side of the metaphorical line you're on.  I suspect that Ukigumo is for those of you who are already a lost cause as far as J-Lit is concerned...

Another J-Lit Giant

Over at the January in Japan blog, it's time for the third in the J-Lit Giants series - but the first by a guest reviewer.  Gary, of The Parrish Lantern fame, introduces Ryuichi Tamura and gives a couple of examples of his poems.  Why not stop by and check it out?  And if this inspires you to write about your own J-Lit favourites, you know who to talk to... :)

'Lizard' by Banana Yoshimoto (Review)

A Happy New Year to everyone out there, and welcome to January in Japan!  I hope you're all ready to get 2013 off to the best possible start - with some great J-Lit :)

My first choice for the month is a book by an author who can polarise opinions like few other J-Lit writers.  While some adore Banana Yoshimoto's female take on late-twentieth-century angst, others dismiss her work as over-hyped pop fiction - occasionally at the same time.  Which description fits best?  I'm not sure I'll be able to answer that question in one little post...

*****
Lizard (translated by Ann Sherif) is a collection of six short stories, each of which is written in Yoshimoto's instantly recognisable style.  Once again we are taken on a tour of middle-class Tokyo to meet a group of characters who would probably be described on Twitter as having #firstworldproblems.  Despite this, the protagonists are, on the whole, interesting people, and the stories draw the reader in, time passing without your being aware of it.

The first story, Newlywed, sets up the collection nicely.  A man on a train decides not to get off at his usual station, bored with his stale marriage, and is joined in the carriage by a hobo - who suddenly turns into a beautiful woman.  This magical touch is also evident in the title story, Lizard, where a young woman with a dark secret has magical healing powers.  More than any of the other Yoshimoto books I've read, this one immediately seems to be drawing on a very familiar influence...

By the time the third story, Helix, appears, the Murakami parallels are uncanny.  In this story, a man goes on a surprise date in a café which has already closed for the night.  He ends up talking the night away with his girlfriend, discussing the concept of memory and the difficulty of deciding which memories are important.  The third story in a row with a male protagonist makes the collection seem a little different to Yoshimoto's other works, even if the themes are very similar.

The second half of the collection though returns to the familiar ground of the writer's twenty-something women struggling to cope with society's expectations.  Whether it's the heroine of Dreaming of Kimchee, who is learning to cope with her role as a scarlet woman, the main character of Blood and Water, who has run away from a benign cult to find herself in the big city, or the prospective bride of A Strange Tale from Down by the River, a woman learning secrets about her past but with plenty of her own - these are the characters readers have come to expect from Yoshimoto.  Which is not necessarily a bad thing...

If you like Yoshimoto's work, you'll definitely enjoy Lizard.  The writer is expert at creating a light, airy atmosphere in which her characters can talk about the things polite society politely ignores.  These people often stand out because of their belief in (or mastery of!) supernatural powers and alternative healing, and in a similar way to Murakami, Yoshimoto shows their struggles to find a place in a rigid, unforgiving society.

Yoshimoto likes to concentrate on the dynamics of relationships more than pushing the plot forward, and this can be successful at times:

"I liked just watching Lizard - the way she threw her coat over her shoulders, the way she bowed her head when she crouched down to tie her shoes, the way her eyes glittered in the mirror when she took a peek at herself.  I loved watching Lizard in her different poses.  The cells of her body dying and coming into being, the curve of her cheeks, the white half-moons on her fingernails.  I felt her brimming with the fluid of life, flowing with the universe.  Her every gesture, every move, brought life to me, a man who had been dormant for so long."
p.42, Lizard (Faber and Faber, 2001)

However, she can also be guilty at times of some very clunky, clumsy writing:

"In fact, we met at his father's funeral, which I attended in my boss's place.  The ritual moved me tremendously.  People had told me what a dignified, splendid man the president had been, how he had run his business innovatively and with integrity.  I had also heard that his employees loved working for him.  When I saw the many people who came to pay their last respects, I knew all these stories must be true."
p.126, A Strange Tale from Down by the River

The last couple of stories, in particular, contain far too much flat, informative prose, at odds with the mood of the rest of the collection.  As always with Yoshimoto though, you do start to wonder how good her translators are...

As to whether Yoshimoto is a hit or a miss, I'm still (and always have been) firmly in the undecided category.  Every book of hers I've read has had an indefinable something that I've enjoyed - but they've all also let me down ever so slightly at some point along the way.  Having said that, Lizard is one I would recommend.  While not all of the stories hit the mark, I enjoyed my little foray into Banana's world, polishing it off in a couple of hours.  When she gets it right, she can (just like old Haruki) hit a nerve with her views on the rigidity of Japanese society:

"It's the way society is now.  You're not supposed to be by yourself.  You get caught in the net, and you can feel it tugging at you as you try to get away from it, just as if you've walked into a spider's web.  You struggle to free yourself, but you can't.  It's in the air; there's no escape from this force, one so inferior to the life force, the energy within us.  You can pretend to ignore it, but it still obscures your vision."
p.75, Dreaming of Kimchee

Like I said - #firstworldproblems ;)

2013 Challenges

Here's how I'm faring with the challenges I've signed up for this year :)

Aussie Author Challenge - January 1st, 2013 - December 31st, 2013
- Tourist Level (read three books by two different Australian writers)
1) Seven Types of Amiguity by Elliot Perlman
2) The Timeless Land by Eleanor Dark
3) The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally
4) Happy Valley by Patrick White
5) My Blood's Country by Fiona Capp

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013 Longlist
1) Traveller of the Century by Andres Neuman
2) The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul 
3) Cold Sea Stories by Paweł Huelle
4) Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas
5) The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
6) A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgård
7) The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker
8) HHhH by Laurent Binet
9) Silent House by Orhan Pamuk
10) Trieste by Daša Drndić
11) Black Bazar by Alain Mabanckou
12) Bundu by Chris Barnard
13) In Praise of Hatred by Khaled Khalifa
14) The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare
15) The Last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani
16) Satantango by László Krasznahorkai 

Japanese Literature Challenge 7 - June 1st, 2013 - January 31st, 2014
- Read a work of Japanese literature!
1) American Stories by Nagai Kafu
2) Sixty-Nine by Ryu Murakami
3) We, the Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino
4) Milky Way Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa
5) Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara
6) The Name of the Flower by Kuniko Mukoda 
7) Lonely Hearts Killer by Tomoyuki Hoshino
8) From the Fatherland, with Love by Ryu Murakami 
9) The Nihon-ryōiki by Kyōkai
10) Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (link is to 2009 review) 
11) Bullfight by Yasushi Inoue
12) Kusamakura by Natsume Soseki (link is to 2010 review)
13) Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata (link is to 2011 review)
14) Shipwrecks by Akira Yoshimura
15) The Frontier Within by Kobo Abe
16) Modern Japanese Stories - An Anthology by Ivan Morris (ed.)
17) The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa
18) Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
19) hardboiled \ hard luck by Banana Yoshimoto
20) Deep River by Shusaku Endo
21) A True Novel by Minae Mizumura
22) Light and Dark by Natsume Soseki
23) Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

German Literature Month - November 2013
- Read a work of German-language literature!
1) Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
2) Nichts als Gespenster (Nothing but Ghosts) by Judith Hermann
3) Holzfällen (Woodcutters) by Thomas Bernhard
4) Was bleibt (What Remains) by Christa Wolf
5) Wellen (Waves) by Eduard von Keyserling
6) Božena by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
7) Wir Fliegen (We're Flying) by Peter Stamm
8) Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie's Fear at the Penalty Kick ) by Peter Handke
9) Professor Unrat (The Blue Angel) by Heinrich Mann
  - Part One, Part Two, Part Three
10) Leonardos Hände (Leonardo's Hands) by Alois Hotschnig