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Toh EnJoe, David Boyd: Harlequin Butterfly (2024, Pushkin Press, Limited)

A surreal novella about the global pursuit of a mysterious writer who somehow writes in …

Compelling ideas, but too short

I decided to read this book because the synopsis made it seem like it would be really relevant to translators and other types of wordsmiths. While that assumption wasn't wrong, I think that the length of the work left me feeling a bit unsatisfied with the philosophical concepts that were being explored in the story.

I don't think that stories necessarily need to provide explicit answers and many excellent stories that I love don't, but this one just felt too short to even give me enough time to begin to chew on what I was reading and contemplate the characters and their actions.

Might try to read some of this authors other work in Japanese, since I don't think anything else is published in English, to get a better grip on the author.