The Emissary

By: Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani - translator

Narrated by: Julian Cihi

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.

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!

Strange, tragic, beautifully written scifi

a rare novel with a mostly untouched premise in Scifi, the novels prose is gentle and human centered, despite the content being tragic, harrowing as a portent in light of current state of the world

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.

Meandering

Usually in stories like this one, there’s too much world building. In this, you just get snippets but I couldn’t tell you (having completed it) what it was about. I didn’t take any lessons from it. It just kind of meandered to an an uneven finish.