The Emissary
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The Emissary
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Narrated by:
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Julian Cihi
About this listen
Yoko Tawada's new novel is a breathtakingly light-hearted meditation on mortality and fully displays what Rivka Galchen has called her "brilliant, shimmering, magnificent strangeness"
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.
©2018 Yoko Tawada; translation Margaret Mitsutani (P)2018 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Near-future Japan has been cut off from the outside world, leaving 108-year-old Yoshiro trapped with his great-grandson Mumei in a spartan 'temporary' house. The population is divided between those born before the calamity - whose life spans have been mysteriously lengthened - and those enfeebled by it: 'The aged could not die; along with the gift of everlasting life, they were burdened with the terrible task of watching their great-grandchildren die.' Tawada’s novel is infused with the anxieties of a 'society changing at the speed of pebbles rolling down a steep hill,' yet she imagines a ruined world with humor and grace." (Publishers Weekly)
"Recessive, lunar beauty [with] a high sheen. Her language has never been so arresting - flickering brilliance." (Parul Sehgal, The New York Times)
"Persistent mystery is what is so enchanting about Tawada’s writing. Her penetrating irony and deadpan surrealism fray our notions of home and combine to deliver another offbeat tale. An absorbing work from a fascinating mind." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 364
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 221
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Story4 out of 5 stars 222
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
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Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 241
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 95
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Story4 out of 5 stars 98
Nanzeen's inauspicious birth in a Bangladeshi village imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents. Married off to a man old enough to be her father, Nanzeen moves to London and cares for her family. But gradually she begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters and her new world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A truly wonderful book!
- By A M on 11-24-03
By: Monica Ali
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All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
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The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4 out of 5 stars 81
Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4 out of 5 stars 101
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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The Cider House Rules
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 24 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,444
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,838
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,829
From one of America's most beloved and respected writers comes the classic story of Homer Wells, an orphan, and Wilbur Larch, a doctor without children of his own, who develop an extraordinary bond with one another.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful
- By Patricia B Tripoli on 07-02-07
By: John Irving
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The Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 197
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 176
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 177
An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 55
These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 108
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 96
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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2 out of 5 stars
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The Vagrants
- By: Yiyun Li
- Narrated by: Jackie Chung
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4 out of 5 stars 54
Yiyun Li is the winner of the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The Vagrants, set in 1979 China, is the story of those affected by the execution of a 28-year-old counterrevolutionary. Though suffering, Li's characters nevertheless struggle to maintain hope amid cruel circumstance.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lovely prose, good story, deadly narration
- By Athene on 05-10-13
By: Yiyun Li
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Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 890
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 695
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Story4 out of 5 stars 695
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,099
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,407
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,400
For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9,574
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 8,432
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8,399
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 521
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 371
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Story4 out of 5 stars 369
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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Priestdaddy
- A Memoir
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Patricia Lockwood
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 953
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 859
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Story4 out of 5 stars 857
Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met - a man who lounges in boxer shorts, who loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972". His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Terrible narration--read, don't listen
- By Penelope on 08-06-17
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Don't Let Him Know
- By: Sandip Roy
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4 out of 5 stars 28
In a boxy apartment building in an Illinois university town, Romola Mitra, a newly arrived young bride, anxiously awaits her first letter from home in India. When she accidentally opens the wrong letter, it changes her life. Decades later, her son Amit finds that letter and thinks he has discovered his mother's secret. But secrets have their own secrets sometimes.
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5 out of 5 stars
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another great book by Roy
- By Amazon Customer on 04-27-15
By: Sandip Roy
What listeners say about The Emissary
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- mechanical bird
- 05-01-24
Beautiful surrealist dream…of apocalypse
I have listened to this novel four times and read the print book at least two more, and I keep discovering new beauties and terrors. Tawada brings readers into a very imaginable apocalyptic landscape and, through dream and nightmare images, leads them to contemplate what humans will do, can do, and should do to face the world we have helped to shape. Like looking at a Dali painting, readers should be prepared to submit to the weirdness of surrealist storytelling if they hope to be sensitive to what Tawada has given shape to. If you can relax into it, the book is not just fascinating, it’s ecstatic. Mitsutani’s ‘s translation participates in all aspects of Tawada’s dreaming. Chi’s narration is fresh and sweet. —Paradise!
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Kenneth McGovern
- 02-17-19
Tedious. Waste of time.
I struggled to finish this seemingly short book. Interesting premise. Poorly written. I have read some very long tedious books in my life. This book stole time from me that I shall never get back.
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1 person found this helpful