Friday, April 8, 2022

First pages.


The 2022 International Booker Prize

The six shortlisted novels have been announced.


https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2022


First pages.



BORA CHUNG 

Cursed Bunny 

Translated by Anton Hur 


The Head 

She was about to flush the toilet. 

“Mother?” 

She looked back. There was a head popping out of the toilet, calling for her. “Mother?”
The woman looked at it for a moment. Then, she flushed the toilet. The head  disappeared in a rush of water. She left the bathroom. 

A few days later, she met the head again in the bathroom. “Mother!” 

The woman reached to flush the toilet again. The head sputtered, “N-no, just a minute ...” 

The woman stayed her hand and looked down at the head in the toilet. 

It was probably more accurate to refer to it as “a thing that vaguely looked like a head” than an actual head. It was about two-thirds the size of an adult’s head and resembled a lump of carelessly slapped-together yellow and grey clay, with a few scattered clumps of wet hair. No ears, no eyebrows. Two slits for eyes so narrow that she couldn’t tell if its eyes were open or closed. The crushed mound of flesh that was meant to be its nose. The mouth was also a lipless slit. This slit was awkwardly opening and closing as it talked to her, its strained speech mixed with the gurgling of a person drowning, making it difficult to understand. 

“What in bloody hell are you?” the woman demanded.
“I call myself the head,” the head replied.
“You would, obviously,” the woman said, “but why are you in my toilet? And why are you calling me ‘Mother’?”
The head strained as it formed unpracticed speech with its lipless mouth. “My  body was created with the things you dumped down the toilet, like your fallen-out  hair and feces and toilet paper you used to wipe your behind.”
The woman became furious. “I never gave the likes of you any permission to  live in my toilet. I never even created you in the first place, so stop calling me ‘mommy.’ Leave before I call the exterminators.” 

• • •



JON FOSSE 

A New Name. Septology Vi–Vii.

Translated by DAMION SEARLS 


And I see myself standing there looking at the two lines that cross in the middle, one brown and one purple, and I see that I’ve painted the lines slowly, with a lot of thick oil paint, and the paint has run, and where the brown and purple lines cross the colours have blended beautifully and I think that I can’t look at this picture anymore, it’s been sitting on the easel for a long time now, a couple of weeks maybe, so now I have to either paint over it in white or else put it up in the attic, in the crates where I keep the pictures I don’t want to sell, but I’ve already thought that thought day after day, I think and then I take hold of the stretcher and let go of it again and I realize that I, who have spent my whole life painting, oil paint on canvas, yes, ever since I was a boy, I don’t want to paint anymore, ever, all the pleasure I used to take in painting is gone, I think and for a couple of weeks now I haven’t painted anything, and I haven’t once taken my sketchpad out of the brown leather shoulderbag hanging above the stack of paintings I’ve set aside, over there between the hall door and the bedroom door, and I think that I want to get rid of this painting and get rid of the easel, the tubes of oil paint, yes, everything, yes, I want to get rid of everything on the table in the main room, everything that has to do with painting in this room that’s been both a living room and a painting studio, and that’s how it’s been since Ales and I moved in here so long ago, so long ago, because it’s all just disturbing me now and I need to get rid of it, get it out of here, and I don’t understand what’s happened to me... 

• • • 


MIEKO KAWAKAMI

Heaven

Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd 


One day toward the end of April, between classes, I unzipped my pencil case and found a folded triangle of paper between the pencils. 

I unfolded it to see what was inside.
“We should be friends.”
That’s all it said. Thin letters that looked like little fishbones, written in mechanical pencil.
I quickly folded it up and slid it back into my pencil  case. Taking a breath, I paused a second before looking around the room as casually as possible. The same group of classmates joking around and howling, the usual break between classes. I tried to calm myself down by repeatedly straightening my textbooks and notebooks, then I sharpened a pencil, taking my time. Before long, the bell rang for third period. Chair legs screeched across the floor. The teacher walked into the room and class began. 

The note had to be a prank, but I had no idea why those guys would try something so subtle after all this time. I sighed in my mind, settling into the usual  darkness.

Only that first note was left inside my pencil case. After that, they were taped to the inside of my desk, clinging to the underside, where my hand would easily detect them. Whenever I found a note, I got goosebumps. I scanned the classroom, careful not to get caught, but it always felt like somebody noticed my reaction. I was overtaken by a strange anxiety, at a loss for how to act. 

• • •




CLAUDIA PIÑEIRO

Elena Knows

Translated by Frances Riddle 


I: MORNING (SECOND PILL) 

1 

The trick is to lift up the right foot, just a few centimetres off the floor, move it forward through the air, just enough to get past the left foot, and when it gets as far as it can go, lower it. That’s all it is, Elena thinks. But she thinks this, and even though her brain orders the movement, her right foot doesn’t move. It does not lift up. It does not move forward through the air. It does not lower back down. It’s so simple. But it doesn’t do it. So Elena sits and waits. In her kitchen. She has to take the train into the city at ten o’clock; the one after that, the eleven o’clock, won’t do because she took the pill at nine, so she thinks, and she knows, that she has to take the ten o’clock train, right after the medication has managed to persuade her body to follow her brain’s orders. Soon. The eleven o’clock train won’t do because by then the medicine’s effect will have diminished and almost disappeared and she’ll be back to where she is now, but without any hope that the levodopa will take effect. Levodopa is the name for the chemical that will begin circulating in her body once the pill has dissolved; she has known that name for a while now. Levodopa. The doctor said it and she wrote it down for herself on a piece of paper because she knew she wasn’t going to understand the doctor’s handwriting. She knows that the levodopa is moving through her body. All she can do now is wait. She counts the streets. She recites the names from memory. From first to last and last to first. Lupo, Moreno, 25 de Mayo, Mitre, Roca. Roca, Mitre, 25 de Mayo, Moreno, Lupo. Levodopa. It’s only five blocks to the train station, it’s not that many, she thinks, and she continues reciting the street names, and continues waiting. Five. She can’t yet shuffle down those five blocks but she can silently repeat the street names. She hopes she doesn’t run into anyone she knows today. No one who will ask after her health or give her their belated condolences over the death of her daughter. 

• • •




GEETANJALI SHREE

Tomb of Sand

Translated by Daisy Rockwell


PART ONE 

MA’S BACK 

1. 

A tale tells itself. It can be complete, but also incomplete, the way all tales are. This particular tale has a border and women who come and go as they please. Once you’ve got women and a border, a story can write itself. Even women on their own are enough. Women are stories in themselves, full of stirrings and whisperings that float on the wind, that bend with each blade of grass. The setting sun gathers fragments of tales and fashions them into glowing lanterns that hang suspended from clouds. These too will join our story. The story’s path unfurls, not knowing where it will stop, tacking to the right and left, twisting and turning, allowing anything and everything to join in the narration. It will emerge from within a volcano, swelling silently as the past boils forth into the present, bringing steam, embers, and smoke. 

There are two women in this story. Besides these women, there are others who came and went, those who kept coming and going, those who always stayed but weren’t as important, and those yet to be mentioned, who weren’t women at all. For now, let’s just say that two women were important, and of these, one was growing smaller, and the other bigger. 

There were two women and one death. 

Two women, one death. How nicely we’ll get on, us and them, once we all sit down together! 

Two women: one mother, one daughter, one growing downwards, the other growing upwards. One laughs and says, I’m growing smaller by the day! The other is saddened, but says nothing when she sees herself growing bigger. 

• • •



OLGA TOKARCZUK

The Books of Jacob

Translated by Jennifer Jacob


Prologue

Once swallowed, the piece of paper lodges in her esophagus, near her heart. Saliva-soaked. The specially prepared black ink dissolves slowly now, the letters losing their shapes. Within the human body, the word splits in two: substance and essence. When the former goes, the latter, formlessly abiding, may be absorbed into the body’s tissues, since essences always seek carriers in matter—even if this is to be the cause of many misfortunes.

“Yente wakes up. But she was just almost dead! She feels this distinctly now, like a pain, like the river’s current—a tremor, a clamor, a rush.

With a delicate vibration, her heart resumes its weak but regular beating, capable. Warmth is restored to her bony, withered chest. Yente blinks and just barely lifts her eyelids again. She sees the agonized face of Elisha Shorr, who leans in over her. She tries to smile, but that much power over her face she can’t quite summon. Elisha Shorr’s brow is furrowed, his gaze brimming with resentment. His lips move, but no sound reaches Yente. Old Shorr’s big hands appear from somewhere, reaching for her neck, then move beneath her threadbare blanket. Clumsily he rolls her body onto the side, so he can check the bedding. Yente can’t feel his exertions, no—she senses only warmth, and the presence of a sweaty, bearded man.

Then suddenly, as though from some unexpected impact, Yente sees everything from above: herself, the balding top of Old Shorr’s head—in his struggle with her body, he has lost his cap.

And this is how it is now, how it will be: Yente sees all.




Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Cait Johnson: Witch Wisdom For Magical Aging

 


• Presents four loving, feisty old witches, one for each season, who share earth-honoring wisdom, rituals, and spells to help you embrace your journey through the sacred latter half of life 

• Filled with magical recipes, inspiring ceremonies, playful activities, and meaningful meditations 

You are invited into the magical world of four loving, feisty old witches, one for each season, who share earth-honoring wisdom, rituals, and spells to help you embrace your journey through the sacred latter half of life. 

In the season of Winter, the earthy Root Witch reminds us that bodies are made for pleasure, and that Winter is made for dreaming. She offers spells, rituals, and ceremonies to reframe your perspectives on aging and promote acceptance of your changing appearance. She also shares secret recipes for a healthy, happy body, focusing on preparations that help maintain and restore hair, skin, and bone. In Spring, the airy Winged Witch offers a witchy approach to spring cleaning, both in the traditional sense and in self-understanding and relationships. She shares recipes and rituals for jettisoning the dead past, discovering your own authentic style, adding magic to your clothes, and feathering your nest so it feels like home to your spirit. 

The fiery Summer Merwitch helps us to be more joyfully creative, with activities and wisdom to help overcome the obstacles that prevent us from fulfilling our creative dreams. She honors the senses, encourages us to embrace our sexuality, and gives us ways to express our fiery anger cleanly and powerfully. The watery Autumn Kitchen Witch shows us how to honor our harvests and our ancestors, how to make peace with death, and how to make every meal a celebration of life, with magical recipes and rituals that bring joy to the soul. The Kitchen Witch also explores several goddesses and wise old women from folklore who can offer templates for a rich and spiritualized maturity. 

Offering practical and enjoyable ways to make aging an empowering, magical, and transformative adventure, this book of spiritual guidance will help you love yourself through the aging process.







Saturday, January 1, 2022

Amanda Gorman. New Day's Lyric.

 







New Day's Lyric




May this be the day

We come together.

Mourning, we come to mend,

Withered, we come to weather,

Torn, we come to tend,

Battered, we come to better.

Tethered by this year of yearning,

We are learning

That though we weren't ready for this,

We have been readied by it.

We steadily vow that no matter

How we are weighed down,

We must always pave a way forward.


*


This hope is our door, our portal.

Even if we never get back to normal,

Someday we can venture beyond it,

To leave the known and take the first steps.

So let us not return to what was normal,

But reach toward what is next.


*


What was cursed, we will cure.

What was plagued, we will prove pure.

Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,

Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,

Where we weren't aware, we're now awake;

Those moments we missed

Are now these moments we make,

The moments we meet,

And our hearts, once all together beaten,

Now all together beat.


*


Come, look up with kindness yet,

For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.

We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,

But to take on tomorrow.


*


We heed this old spirit,

In a new day's lyric,

In our hearts, we hear it:

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

Be bold, sang Time this year,

Be bold, sang Time,

For when you honor yesterday,

Tomorrow ye will find.

Know what we've fought

Need not be forgot nor for none.

It defines us, binds us as one,

Come over, join this day just begun.

For wherever we come together,

We will forever overcome.