Memoirs of a Polar Bear [Paperback]

In this masterful performance of otherness, Tawada pushes us to feel the humming possibility between how things appear and what they could be.Tawada masterfully transports the reader to this place approachingtranscendence, where language  so distinctly human, we suppose  bringsus into imaginative intimacy with another kind of being.[T]he animal characters ofA writer of scrupulous intensity.In Memoirs, when a polar bear walks into a bookstore or a grocery store, there are no troubles stemming from a lack of opposable thumbs. As with Kafkas animal characters, we are freed to dislike them in the special way we usually reserve only for ourselves.For all the wonderful workings of plot and structure in Memoirs of the Polar Bear, what is truly affecting is Tawada's writing, which jumps off the page and practically sings.This novel is ''doubly translated'' in the sense that Yoko Tawada first wrote it in Japanese and then translated it herself into German, from whence it was re-crafted into English. It even boasts an additional layer of translating, as it were, since the first part of the book is narrated by a Russian-speaking bear. The story itself follows three generations of polar bears across the world in a powerful tale of both family and isolation.The empathy for these magnificent bears, from the cruelty foisted onthem, of which they are unaware, to the love poured on them by those whocare for them just drips off the page.Tawada bears out the truth that tongues can also bring inventive thoughts to vibrant life.A distinguished contribution to the unique paranoid style of the new European novel.Ms Tawada brings her fine-nosed, soft-furred beasts to life... [Tawada] has a deadpan wit and disorienting mischief all her own, nimbly translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.Yoko Tawadas whimsical ursine family saga expresses a powerful sense of justice. Something about the way Tawada writes  and Bernofskys beautifultranslation stays truelÓ%