Friday, March 30, 2012

It’s through the IFFP Window (A murder most mundane)

professor-andersens-night 1
*
What if ? after eating a great meal alone, maybe you’ve had a couple of glasses of your favourite spirit, &  now thoroughly relaxed you look out of the window, casting a comfortable possessive eye over this, your neighbourhood, your domain that you know every brick of. What if whilst you are doing this, you see a murder committed ?



How would you react?
Would you report it?
Are you sure?



Christmas Eve and Professor Anderson is a contented successful man spending this eve by himself in his apartment, quite happy with his lot as he prepares his traditional meal in his traditional manner. Pal Anderson is a 55 year old Professor of Literature, living a life of apparent ease, untroubled by his existence as he relaxes with a meal and a couple of glasses of good cognac. He glances over at the windows of his neighbours & observes what looks like a beautiful young woman, he glances again and this time he sees a man murdering her.

Faced with this act he recoils back with shock and horror. He heads to the phone and picks it up, before finding himself unable to make the call, unable to report to what he himself perceives is an awful crime. At first it’s as though he is merely postponing his decision, reasoning the why’s and wherefores, but his inaction soon leads to prevarication, in that he is actively evading making the call. The next day he goes to a dinner party at the house of  his friend, he even sets off early with the aim of discussing his dilemma with his best friend, but finds himself unable to. We then follow the Professor over a period of a couple of months as his inability to act becomes a point that brings his whole life under question, until he is questioning every aspect of his world. Even bumping into the murderer in a sushi bar leads to no more than another round of self analysis.
professor-andersens-night

Although this book is centred around a murder, like the Professor himself, it explores everything bar the murder. Pal Anderson and his existential angst meander from location to location, like some lab rat caught in a maze constantly stumbling over this most mundane of murders.

This is a beautiful and subtly written book and at times this is it’s problem, there’s a drowsiness, an indolence to the tale and although that was a reflection of the Professor’s dilemma, at times I felt we were stuck in the doldrums. There’s also a great deal of intelligence in this book, that makes this harder to write about without name dropping  the usual suspects, it’s almost as if the book is better a couple of days after you’ve finished it, when it has had time to percolate through your thought processes.


In a way the book reminded me more of a research paper - detailing a certain segment of society - than a thriller, the dry almost clinical style and the third person narrative combine to give the idea of some individual monitoring the professor’s every move with notepad in hand. Despite this the book has moments of humour and can be poignant & moving as though Dag Solstad felt some affection for his lab rat.


Dag Solstad
Born 16 July 1941, is a Norwegian novelist, short-story writer. He has written close to 30 books and has received the Norwegian Literary Critics Award three times. His works have been translated into 20 languages.
Dag Solstad (Wiki)
literaturfestival - dag-solstad

Agnes Scott Langeland
Born in Scotland, Agnes Scott Langeland has resided in Norway since 1971. As a translator, she has mainly focused on contemporary Norwegian literature and culture. In addition to her translations of Kjell Askildsen, she has published poems by Rune Christiansen in The Edinburgh Review; and Petter Mejlænder's book Pushwagner (Magikon, 2008). She is currently a lecturer in the English language at the University of Agder.
wordswithoutbordersfrom-the-translator-agnes-scott-langeland

Friday, March 23, 2012

New Finnish Grammar–Diego Marani (#IFFP)

Translated by Judith Landry
new finnish grammar

Memory is an individuals ability to evoke or revive specific events from their lives. Memory is thought to divide into 3 main subdivisions, these being Working memory (prefrontal Cortex), Long term memory (hippocampus) and Skill memory (Cerebellum). These all play their part in contributing to our identity, by the building of new memories and the retaining of past ones, also by providing us with scenarios that allows us to know how to behave socially. Making memory an important factor in building an individuals identity.




In Diego Marani’s book New Finnish Grammar, a man is found on a Trieste quay, unconscious with obvious head wounds. When he regains consciousness he  appears to have  no memory, or language, to all intents and purposes he has become an empty vessel devoid of all that we would perceive necessary for an individuals identity, in fact the only thing that marks him in any way is a name-tag inside the seaman’s jacket he’s wearing, with the Finnish name Sampo Karjalainen and a handkerchief embroidered S.K.
*

He is taken to a hospital ship that is anchored nearby & administered to by a doctor who’s origins are Finnish and it is he who recognises the name as that of a native of his homeland. The doctor (Petri Friari) has a troubled past with his native land due to the way his parents, particularly the way his father, was hounded by his fellow countrymen, then put to death as a communist traitor. All of this feeds into the way the doctor proceeds to help the man now known as Sampo, whom he sees as a version of himself & he takes on the task of restoring Sampo to the man he believes he is, by reacquainting  him with what he perceives is his native tongue and then by repatriating him to Finland, with a letter introducing him to a fellow doctor.


Despite being in what he thinks could be his homeland, he remains rootless, almost a ghost figure haunting the society he happens to be with, incapable of forming a relationship with either himself or others, still trying to master a language which could provide the key to unlock the identity he feels is trapped within.
New Finnish Grammar demonstrates that not only is memory an important building block to identity but so is language, that it’s purpose is not merely as an instrument for communication, but also relates to the behavioural codes and cultural values that go to construct ones identity and that not only does language define the characteristics of a specific group or community, it is also the means by which an individual identifies themselves and how they identify with others. 


All of this is played out against the backdrop of the last remaining years of the second world war, with Finland caught between Russia and Germany and is told via a manuscript Friari finds in 1946 which is


"written in a spare, indeed broken and often ungrammatical Finnish, in a school notebook where pages of prose alternate with lists of verbs, exercises in Finnish grammar & bits cut out of the Helsinki telephone directory”.


This Friari interrupts with his own commentary adding explanations, adding his own reasoning/opinion on a particular event or remark. By using this technique Marani manages to create a tale of two men both at odds with their image of themselves, with their identity as individuals. He also asks questions such as to what extent learning/ re-learning a language affects who you are, like some blank canvas can you become a totally different individual or would you find yourself lost, torn from the roots of all that you were and what it is that binds all that a person is & within that binding are we all empty vessels, foundering in search of the something, someone that could save us.
This is a beautifully written book, that needs time to be absorbed & Judith Landry’s translation of it, allowed me the opportunity to do that, to which she earns my heartfelt thanks.




Diego Marani born in Ferrara (Italy) in 1959 is married with two children and works as a senior linguist for the European Union in Brussels. In 1996, while working as a translator for the Council of the European Union, he invented Europanto, a mock international auxiliary language. Every week he writes a column for a Swiss newspaper in Europanto. He also published a collection of short stories in Europanto, Las Adventures des Inspector Cabillot has been published by Dedalus. In Italian he has published six novels including this and  The Last of the Vostyachs.

Judith Landry was educated at Somerville College, Oxford where she obtained a first class honours degree in French and Italian. She combines a career as a translator of works of fiction, art and architecture with part-time teaching. Her translations for Dedalus are: The House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga, New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani, The Devil in Love by Jacques Cazotte, Prague Noir: The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague by Sylvie Germain and Smarra & Trilby by Charles Nodier.


IFFP shadow - Copy1
Neuropeans (D.Marani)
Judith Landry(Goodreads)
Diego Marani(Wiki)
Dedalus Books

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

World Poetry day(21-03-2012)




Every year on 21st March UNESCO celebrate their World Poetry Day.
UNESCO is the “United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization” – an agency of the United Nations that promotes education and communication and the arts
The decision to proclaim 21 March as World Poetry Day was adopted during the UNESCO’s 30th session held in Paris in 1999.

According to UNESCO, the main objective of World Poetry Day is to “support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities”.

What do people do?

Many people around the world celebrate World Poetry Day on or around March 21 each year. Government agencies, educators, community groups and individuals get involved in promoting or participating in the day. World Poetry Day is an opportunity for children to be introduced to poetry in classrooms. It is a time when classrooms are busy with lessons related to poetry, in which students examine poets and learn about different types of poetry.

Poets may be invited to read and share their work to audiences at book stores, cafes, universities and schools. Awards and other forms or recognition are made to honour poets and their work. Exhibitions and poetry evenings are also be held to showcase the work of various poets on or around March 21 to coincide with World Poetry Day.


From their site:

Moreover, this Day is meant to support poetry, return to the oral tradition of poetry recitals, promote teaching poetry, restore a dialogue between poetry and the other arts such as theatre, dance, music, painting and so on, support small publishers and create an attractive image of poetry in the media so that the art of poetry will no longer be considered an out-dated form of art.
Today is World Poetry day, which has the aim of promoting  the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world.
One of the aims of  The Parrish Lantern,  is to get more poetry out there, to promote poetry & poets, although this may appear to be a worthwhile, head-held-high culture-buff, kind of gesture, it’s not, to be honest it’s far more basic than that. The simple fact is, I love poetry, nay adore the stuff, would happily meander down the street spouting the stuff  - Don’t try it! appreciation is often expressed by placing one in a locked room. So to get round that slight obstacle here on The Parrish Lantern, we promote events such as World Poetry Day, by taking a journey around the world via its poets

Lapse – Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Ghana)

The Greyhound is late. I’ve been fast
asleep too long to know why, but the man
beside me – Chinese – tells me what time it is.

He turns to the back-lit maze of his phone, taps
a geometry of buttons, gets lost in an exchange
about auditions and lost opportunities. I look

across the aisle: the big guy with the Yankees
cap has struck up a dialogue with the Polish
woman beside him. Her dark eyebrows arch –

an eager pair – in synch under her blond hail; I can
tell she’s open; so is he, but he’s fearful, hasn’t
yet learnt the curved asymmetry of lust. There is

already a lapse between her keenness, his lean
and the speed of his initiative. Somebody should
tell him that if the lapse grows any longer

the door of chance will close – snap in
his face. It’s already too late. The bus is
drifting into Harlem, Connecticut a distant memory:

I hear him say excuse me, he calls his Mom. A pink
rose blooms on the woman’s cheek, she looks
outside. I hang my head, exhale, and close

my eyes. The man beside me snaps his phone shut.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a Ghanaian editor, socio-cultural commentator poet and author of the acclaimed hybrid literary novel,Tail of the Blue Bird (Random House), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and translated into Dutch and German. A 2007 recipient of Ghana’s national ACRAG award for poetry and literary advocacy, he has held visiting positions at the University of Southampton and California State University and delivered lectures and talks on poetry and creative writing at universities internationally. Nii Ayikwei holds an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck (University of London) and serves on the boards of the Poetry Book Society, the Arvon Foundation and the Caine Prize. As a poet he has published several pamphlets and his latest books of poetry The Makings of You (Peepal Tree Press). was described in the Guardian as, “An astonishing, powerful remix of history and language”

Living with Ezra - Kristine Ong Muslim (Philippines)

And this one guy lingered long after the crowd had dispersed. He bent down and inspected the remains of the fallen Humpty Dumpty.

The eggshells littered the pavement directly below the wall. The yolk, once a glistening yellow sun, was now a splotch of yellow mixed with dust.

And this one guy half-wanted to glue Humpty Dumpty back together, half-wanted to just stand back and admire the carnage.

 

Kristine Ong Muslim has authored many chapbooks, including Night Fish (Elevated Books, 2011), Insomnia (Medulla Publishing, 2012), Smaller Than Most  (Philistine Press, 2011). Forthcoming books include the full-length poetry collection Grim Series (Popcorn Press) and several print chapbooks.

Her short fiction and poetry have been published in hundreds of magazines, journals, and anthologies, including Bellevue Literary Review, Boston Review,Contrary Magazine, Hobart, Existere, Narrative Magazine, Southword,Sou'wester, The Pedestal Magazine, Turnrow, and Verse Daily.

She has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Web 2011, and the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Rhysling Award. Her work also has garnered several Honourable Mentions in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.

Her online home is http://kristinemuslim.weebly.com

 

 

BASHÕ - Cees Nooteboom (Netherlands)

1
Old man among the reeds mistrust of the poet.
He is on his way to the North he is making a book with his eyes.
He is writing himself upon the water he has lost his master.
Love only in things cut out of clouds and winds.
This his calling to visit his friends take leave.
Under fluttering breezes to gather skulls and lips.
Always the eye’s kiss translated into the words’ drive.
Seventeen the sacred number in which coming-forth is ordained.
To digest the past frozen stony as a butterfly.
Polished fossils in a marble tide.
Here passed by the poet on his journey to the North.
Here passed by the poet finally forever.
2
We know poetic poetry the common dangers
of moonstruckness, bel canto. Embalsamed air, that is all,
unless you turn it into pebbles that flash and hurt.
You, old master, polish the pebbles
that you fling to bring down a thrush.
Out of the world you cut an image that bears your name.
Seventeen pebbles for arrows a school of deathly singers.
See by the waterside the track of the poet
on his way to the innermost snowland. See how the water erases it
how the man with the hat inscribes it again
preserves water and footprint, capturing the movement that has passed,
so that what vanished is still there as something that vanished.
3
Nowhere in this universe have I a fixed dwelling
he wrote on his cypress hat. Death took off his hat,
as should be. The sense has remained.
Only in his poems could he dwell.
Just a little while and you will see the cherry blossoms of Yoshino.
Leave your sandals under the tree, lay your brushes aside.
Wrap your stick in your hat, build up the water in lines.
The light is yours, night too.
A while longer the cypress hat and you too will see them,
the snows of Yoshino, the ice cap of Sado,
the island that takes ship to Soren over gravestone waves.
4
The poet is a milling through him the landscape is turned into words.
Yet he thinks just like you and his eyes see the same.
The sun coming to grief in the mouth of the horse.
The outermost temple of Ise the beach of Narumi.
He travels under the sail of grief he steers toward his mission.
His jaws grind flowers into verses foot by foot.
The bookkeeping of the universe as the universe daily presents itself.
In the North he knows himself for a heap of old clothes.
If he is where he will never again be you read his poems:
he peeled cucumbers and mad-apples he paints his life
I too was tempted by the wind that blows the clouds.

Cees Nooteboom (born Cornelis Johannes Jacobus Maria Nooteboom) born 1933, has won numerous literary awards and international renown as an author of novels, novellas and travel books, but likes to think of himself as a poet first. As a poet, he made his début in 1956 with a collection entitled De doden zoeken een huis (The Dead Seek a Home). He never joined any literary circle or group, but remained a loner who felt at home in many rooms of 'the house of poetry' & yet still has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature.

Natures - Gloria Posada (Columbia)

To breathe or to evaporate
to take root or to go somewhere else
Surface is skin or plumage
Departure is flight or path

In the being
horizons are renovated
languages name worlds

The past is the echo of oblivion
Love finds silence
bodies feel the cold

Thought seeks answers
Closeness as distance
gaze as desire
Stars or cells
Blood interior inaccessible

Gloria Posada was born in Colombia in 1967, Since the late 1980s, Gloria Posada has devoted herself to an enquiry into nature and the world, which manifests itself sometimes in words and sometimes in images or shapes. In her quest, poetry and plastic arts have had a parallel development, which occasionally involves installations, sound art or interventions of public space.In 1992 she won the National Young Poetry Award of the Colombian Institute of Culture with her book Oficio divino (Divine Office).  In 1991 she won second prize in the Carlos Castro Saavedra National Poetry Award, and in 1990 she was shortlisted for the Eduardo Cote Lamus National Poetry Award with Vosotras (You Women). Naturalezas (Natures) won a Honourable Mention in the Casa de las Américas Hispano-American Poetry Award (Havana, Cuba) in 2002. These prize-winning collections were later published. In 2002, she also won the Individual Creation Scholarship of the Colombian Ministry of Culture for her Lugares (Places) project. In 2004, she was granted the Colombia-Mexico artistic residence and the FONCA/CONALCULTA award of Mexico.

Common Knowledge - Yi Sha (China)

on the street
in a towering summer heat-wave

a young girl hops
with her hands over her ears

her behaviour is a little odd
there is something beautiful about her

oddness and a so-called beauty
this gives people

the feelings they want
but they pay no attention

to the cause and the source
of her actions

but I know
I have mastered such common knowledge
as a boy

on the way home from the swimming pool
the same movements

would help me get rid of
any last remaining water in my eyes or ears

hotly it would trickle away
and I would then be able to hear the surrounding world again

just like the young girl here before me
I’m sure she’s feeling pretty good right now

hopping with her hands over her ears on the street in a towering summer heat-wave

such common knowledge as this
has helped me find a way into a poetry of essentials

 

Yi Sha was born in 1966 in Chengdu, and moved with his family at the age of two to the central Chinese city of Xi’an in Shaanxi province. He published his first poems while still at school, studied Chinese at Beijing Normal University, and became a noted figure among China’s university student poets. He has worked on literary magazines, as a TV presenter and independent publisher, and is now an assistant professor at the Xi’an International Studies University. In 1988 he published a mimeographed first collection, Lonely Street, but found an official publisher for his next collection, Starve the Poets! (1994).Starve the Poets! (Bloodaxe Books, 2008) is his first English publication outside China.

Question Time – G.Moon (uk)

Electrodes connect,
jerks the flesh membrane
fire pulses the cells
own route, then
shuts down. Water
Shocks, cools, revitalizes
Puts hope on the backburner
then envelopes the body's
lifeline, cracked naked
the line roots and worms.
A path becomes impulse
all thought gives way to.

Gary Moon is too young to be personal friends of the Beatles/Stones etc. although that hasn’t stopped him humming their tunes badly, when he thought he was alone. He has been writing what he terms word puzzles for as long as his memory can recall. he is not particularly fond of the word Poet, preferring to refer to himself as a Word-botherer or if feeling especially pretentious Wort-Schmied, because of the combination of word & smith relating in his mind to a worker ethic through the idea of a blacksmith toiling at some furnace. A couple of glasses of whisky normally calms him down enough to return to earth. He has been published once & came somewhere in an online poetry comp.

Airwaves - Nuala Ní Chonchúir (Ireland)


You say I am more
canal than river.


Today, unlike myself, I concur.
Even I can be agreeable
on the right occasion.
And what an occasion:


I have old – wampum beads,
a silver peacock – new,
borrowed – wrist-slung pearls,
Airwaves, unchewed – blue.
On Avenue of the Strongest
we swap rings.
On Avenue of the Americas
we eat our fill.
We stroll Fifth to Madison Square.


Here we sit in our
newly minted marriage
in the evening heat.


Today I am more
river than canal.

 

Born in Dublin in 1970, Nuala Ní Chonchúir lives in Galway county. Her début novel You (New Island, 2010) was called ‘a heart-warmer’ by The Irish Times and ‘a gem’ by The Irish Examiner. Her third short story collection Nude (Salt, 2009)) was shortlisted for the UK’s Edge Hill Prize. Her second short story collection To The World of Men, Welcome has just been re-issued by Arlen House in an expanded paperback edition.The Juno Charm, her third full poetry collection, was launched in November. Nuala's newest short story collection Mother America appears from New Island in 2012.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Oxford Book of Irish short Stories, Ed’ by William Trevor


 The Hour of Death.  (A folktale)
The old people used to say that in the olden times everybody knew the exact time when he would die.
There was a man who knew that he would die in autumn. He planted his crops the previous spring, but instead of building a fine fence around them, all he did was plant a makeshift hedge of a few rushes and ferns to guard the crops. It so happened that God (praise be & glory to him!) sent an angel down on earth to find out how the people were getting on. The angel came to this man and asked him what he was doing. The Man told him. “And why haven’t you a better fence than that makeshift to protect your crops?” asked the angel. “It will do me,” said the man, “until I have the crop stored. Let those who succeed me look after their own fences. I’ll die this autumn”. The Angel returned  and told the Almighty what had happened. And from that day on, people lost foreknowledge of the hour of death.
(Edited & translated from the Irish by  Sean O’Sullivan)


9780192141804
In the introduction to this fantastic collection of short stories from Ireland, William Trevor states that  “The Modern short story may be defined as the distillation of an essence. It may be laid down that it has to have a point, that it must be going somewhere, that it dare not be vague.” He then goes on to say that art has its own way of defying both definitions and rules and that neither offer much help when examining the short stories of his homeland. Born in Mitchels-town, County Cork in 1928 he has spent a lifetime imbibing the spirit of Irish storytelling, whether told as a means of communication or as entertainment, placing him in the ideal role of editor of this anthology. The Oxford Book of Irish short Stories manages  to encompass within its pages tales that would have been told at the hearthside, through to writers as varied as Oliver Goldsmith, Maria Edgeworth, James Joyce, Liam O'Flaherty, Bernard Mac Laverty and Desmond Hogan.
*

But I will concentrate on a writer recommended to me by Mel of The Reading Life.



Gerald Griffin (1803-1840) was an Irish novelist, poet and playwright. Born in Limerick (Ireland) the son of a brewer. In 1823 he went to London to work as a reporter for one of the daily papers, only later turning to the writing of fiction. One of his most famous works is 'The Collegians', written about the murder of the Colleen Bawn - the name under which the novel was performed as a stage play - in 1820. In 1838, he burned all of his unpublished manuscripts and joined the Catholic religious order "Congregation of Christian Brothers" at The North Monastery, Cork, where he died from typhus fever.




The Brown Man, is a tale about a beautiful  girl living in abject poverty who unwittingly marries a demon type creature. He takes her home to what he says is his estate, but which turns out to be  a wild bog and his palace which is nothing more than a clay hovel. After they go to bed, he gets up & leaves, she only feigning sleep is aware of this. This happens again on the next night, so on the third night she follows him & sees him in a churchyard sat at an open grave eating…. I’ll leave the tale there, just adding apart from the horror aspects of this tale, there runs a wonderful sense of humour of which here is an example….


“It was a very fine morning in those parts, for it was only snowing and hailing” the whole tale is told with this same dry & slightly skewed humour which makes it a joy to read.



This is just a couple of tales from this book and as it says on the flyleaf, “The roots of the modern short story in Ireland are firmly embedded in the soil of the past, and in this wonderful anthology echoes and influences pervade individual stories to enrich our understanding of a unique literary tradition.”






leprichaun1_thumb[8]

Friday, March 16, 2012

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjon. (#IFFP)


In the prelude to this tale we follow a hunter on his way home  from hunting some colossal and huge tusked boar, “the most savage brute the north has ever snorted from it’s icy nostrils”, although the traditional way is to leave the carcass where it fell, the hunter is carrying it  home to demonstrate to his father, which of his sons labours the hardest. Home, we the reader, learn is called “Seventh Heaven” and all is not well, the gate guards are silent, there’s no sound of merrymaking from the banqueting hall and


Conditions in the chamber were sickening; many of the angels were laughing with fear, others were weeping with hollow laughter, still others laughed and wept at once. The Ophanim had cast off their robes and knelt with brows pressed to the cold steps of the throne, letting fly with knotted scourges on their blazing shoulders”.



The hunter, we learn, is Lucifer and he is standing before his father who is holding something that is outlawed in heaven: there laying in his hand was man.


“ there you lay in his hand, with your knees tucked under your chin, breathing so fast and so feebly that you quivered like the pectoral fin of a minnow.Our Father rested His fingertip against your spine and tilted His hand carefully so that you uncurled and rolled over on to your back. I stepped forward to take a better look at you. You scratched your nose with your curled fist, sneezed, oh so sweetly, and fixed on me those egotistical eyes – mouth agape. And I saw that this mouth would never be satisfied, that its teeth would never stop grinding, that its tongue would never tire of being bathed in the life-blood of other living creatures. Then your lips moved. You tried to say your first word, and that word was: ‘I’.

This was Lucifer's introduction to man and his father wants him to join his brothers and bow before him. He refuses to bow before what he sees as his fathers pet and is cast out of heaven, but leaves Man a parting gift – a vision of himself.
The Husavik Whale Museum


In the main section of the book, we are in 17th-century Iceland, and our hero is  Jónas Pálmason the Learned, a self-taught naturalist, poet and healer, who has been sentenced to a strange form of exile, stranded on an island with the threat of death on any who helps him leave. As the book unfolds we learn of his life, of how as a youth, who having learnt from the writings of a Dr Bombastus (Paracelsus), was  acquainted with and knew the prescription for most female maladies. He bartered that knowledge for Ravens heads, which according to Bombastus, contains a special stone that can cure most blood illnesses,  called a bezoar.


In a country that had violently became Lutheran after the reformation, Jonas with his mix of book learning & pagan lore, falls foul of the authorities and is charged with sorcery and necromancy, although these charges appear to be have been the most convenient ones to silence him with, as the main problem is that he threatens the status quo with his ideology.
Whilst researching for this book, I learnt that it is based in  part on the autobiographical writings of Jon Gudmundsson, also known as  “the Learned”, he was a farmers son from the Strandir region (Northwest Iceland). At twenty years of age he was an excellent scribe and seems to have been well known for paintings and carvings, although nothing has survived to the present. Today he is known for his autobiographical writing, including works mentioning the arrival of Spanish (Basque) whalers and the killing of a group of whalers by the Icelanders*.


I also learned that in 1617 King Christian IV of Denmark decreed that all sorcery, whether white or black, was evil and illegal. He also decreed that it was to be harshly suppressed throughout his domain. In 1630 this had reached Iceland and was read out in the Althing** in Icelandic translation and became law. It was even debated whether it was a suitable or  legitimate subject for scientific study. In 1627 a priest named Gudmundur  Einarsson, wrote a treatise called “Hugras” denouncing Jon Gudmundsson as an emissary of the devil, sent to fool the people by habituating them to lesser forms of sorcery and he also castigates The Sheriffs of Iceland (syslummen) for neglecting the 1617 decree. In 1637 Gudmundsson was sentenced in the Icelandic parliament to permanent exile for practising white magic & misuse of God’s name, but King Christian IV, stepped in and lightened the sentence, permitting him to reside in eastern Iceland.
sjon
*Sjon seems to have taken these dry historical facts mixed them up with the natural lore of his country, then spun the lot through some giant kaleidoscope, not once but many times, that he is a poet is also beyond dispute the writing is wonderful,


“I first glimpsed my future wife by the will o' the wisp light of the eclipse. At the very moment when the sun was halved, Sigrídur captured my gaze with her eyes - eyes that were a haven of peace amidst the storm of madness that raged on the farm.”


Although  Victoria Cribb, also deserves high praise for her translation from  Icelandic, with  her use of words like “Helpmeet” & “Braggart” making  the book appear grounded in an older form of English, allowing me to get a taste of the period, yet in my native tongue. I have discussed before in another post, about when you meet someone for the first time and there is a certain formality to it, like a polite introduction, followed by a period of time where you size each other up, are you going to like this person, do you have anything in common etc. Then there are those that cut straight through that process, beyond the initial introduction, you’re already smiling/laughing at some shared humour, as though you’ve known each for an eternity. Jonas Sandpiper is such an individual and although he may be a “rogue, sly, a disreputable fellow, a liar and a foolish dreamer”
I could quite happily sit in a bar somewhere with a glass of some fermented herb/ whale blubber etc, listening to his inane or impassioned warbling all night long.
This is a strange and wonderful book, it's also harsh, weird, comic and magical, we have walking corpses (ghosts ?) kicking butt, and yet it has horror, cowardice & cruelty, as Jonas says himself


"When did a skilled craftsman first fiddle with a nail between his fingers, then happen to glance at the hammer that hung heavily at his side, and see not the carpentry job in front of him, but his brother nailed to a cross?".



Sjón was born in Reykjavik in 1962. Poet, novelist and playwright, he has received numerous literary awards, including the Nordic Council's Literature Prize for The Blue Fox, which was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2009.
He was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Brit Award for the music, which he collaborated on with Bjork, for Dancer In The Dark.
From The Mouth of the Whale is his second novel to be published by Telegram. His work has been translated into twenty-two languages.

Sjon(Wiki)IFFP shadow - Copy1
Publishing Perspectives (Sjon)

Words Without Borders (Sjon)

*Slaying of Basque Whalers?

**Althing is the national parliament (literally, "(the) all-thing", or general assembly) of Iceland. It is the oldest parliamentary institution in the world still extant.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Irish Fairy Tales–W.B. Yeats


“People think  I am merely trying to bring back a little of the old dead beautiful world of romance into this century of great engines and spinning Jinnies. Surely the hum of wheels and clatter of presses, to let alone the lecturers with their black coats and tumblers of water, have driven away the goblin kingdom and made silent the feet of the little dancers.”

W. B. Yeats, then goes on to state that Old Biddy Hart, in her thatched cottage has little use for such opinions, will hold no truck with the “learned sorts” and their new fangled knowledge. She knows that to offend the old ways will lead to ones come-uppance and any one not rightly respectful of the  ancient folk, cannot be alright in their head, regardless of the bo51HY1F75P1L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-35,22_AA300_SH20_OU02_oks & words they claim to know. This is part quote, part paraphrase from the introduction to a lovely book of Irish Fairy Tales compiled in 1892 by William Butler Yeats.
The book is divided under four main headings – Land and Water Fairies, Evil Spirits, Cats, and  Kings and Warriors, it also has a fascinating appendix, which explains the classification of Irish Fairies divided into The Sociable Fairies,The Sheoques,Merrows and Solitary Fairies such as The Lepricaun, The Pooka & The Dullahan etc. This is followed by a section listing the authorities on Irish Folklore & a biography of Yeats himself.
What makes this a great read is the universality of the tales. I wrote a post last year about a similar book,  Italian Folktales (Fiabe Italiane, pub’ 1956) compiled & edited by Italo Calvino and although this isn’t of that scale, what he wrote in his introduction holds true here.

“These folk stories are the catalogue of the potential destinies of the men and women,especially for that stage in life when destiny is formed, i,e, youth, beginning with birth, which itself often foreshadows the future, then the departure from home, and finally through the trials of growing up, the attainment of maturity and proof of one’s humanity. This sketch although summary, encompasses everything: the arbitrary divisions of humans, albeit in essence equal, into Kings and poor people, the persecution of the innocent and their subsequent vindication, which are the terms inherent in every life, love unrecognised when first encountered and then no sooner experienced than lost; the common fate of subjection to spells, or having one’s existence predetermined by complex and unknown forces. This complexity pervades one’s entire existence and forces one to struggle to free oneself, to determine one’s own fate; at the same time we can liberate ourselves only if we liberate other people, for this is a sine qua non* of one’s own liberation. There must be fidelity to a goal and purity of heart, values fundamental to salvation and triumph. There must also be beauty, a sign of grace that can be masked by the humble, ugly guise of a frog; and above all, there must present the infinite possibilities of mutation, the unifying element in everything: Men, Beasts, Plants, Things.”

One of my favourite of the tales here is The man who never knew fear (Translated from the Gaelic by Douglas Hyde), this is a tale of a man who, through his lack of fear, goes through a series of task and ends up rich and with the pretty girl. This is a tale I already knew under a different title(Dauntless Little John) in the Italian folktales, perfectly demonstrating that these tales under numerous guises are universal. Another of my favourites has echoes of Don Quixote, The little Weaver of Duleek Gate by Samuel Lover, the hero of this book fed up with work, offends everyone, builds himself armour from pots & pans before offering his services to the King of Dublin. Calvino’s intention with his later work was to emulate The Brothers Grimm and, as I said before, this doesn’t  have the breadth of that one, yet it still is a collection of tales that would be popular amongst the general reading public and as stated of that other collection, within these pages we follow a nations collective psyche and yield to the joyous imagination and complexity of the human experience.


PS. In reply to the quote starting this post, What’s wrong with bringing  back a little of the old dead beautiful world of romance into this century of great engines.


“William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Irishman so honoured for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).” (Wiki)

This is a collection of tales
Irish Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg)


leprichaun1




*Latin for "without which, not;" hence, an alternative way of expressing the presence of a necessary condition.An essential or indispensable element or condition; a test used to establish causation in fact

Friday, March 9, 2012

Brothers–Asko Sahlberg.

brothers asko sahlberg

The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg is set at the end of The Finnish War, fought between Sweden and the Russian Empire (Feb’ 1808 – Sept’ 1809) the result of this war was that the eastern third of Sweden was established as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire. The book starts with the brothers, who have fought on opposing sides, returning to their family farmhouse. With their return old scars resurface, old conflicts born out of past tragedies. The elder brother, Henrik, is embittered, having long been alienated from his family after first being cheated by a neighbour and then his younger brother Erik. This book manages within it’s 122 pages to cover all those epic themes of  treachery & conflict, whether through sexual tensions or those family secrets that simmer below the surface or whether contrasting the politics of war with those of family.

As this tale unfolds, each character takes their turn in revealing more of the story in a series of dramatic  monologues, that made me think of Alan Bennett’s TV show Talking Heads, (written for BBC television -1988) creating a multiple narrative that’s dark and full of a foreboding that is as dark and chilling as winter. In fact this whole book is as dark and dense as wading through deep snow, and like traipsing through this landscape, you feel you’ve been traipsing for ages and nothing has changed until you look up and find you’ve journeyed miles. This is a small book that portrays grand themes and yet does so by focusing it’s lens on this family and it’s brooding tale, where the passion burns bitter, another way it reminded me was in the similar themes of death, guilt and isolation.

Asko Sahlberg_netti

Asko Sahlberg, born 1964, has acquired a fame in Finland that has yet to be replicated in the English speaking world. He published his first novel in 2000 and has written steadily since then, completing his ninth work, The Brothers, in 2010.

This was a wonderfully told tale, translated by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah, a multi-lingual mother and daughter translation team. Emily has an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in German Studies. Fleur, her mother, is Finnish. They have worked together before, translating the poetry of Helvi Juvonen and Sirkka Turkka, this is their take on this book

 

Fleur on translating The Brothers:

“As a Finn, I took an instant liking to the book because of its Nordic quality and the way this quality is combined with universal themes. I felt this combination would make it attractive to readers outside Finland, and translating the work would be a wonderful challenge and a way of making Sahlberg accessible to non-Finnish speakers.”

“And a challenge it proved to be. I began the task by producing a literal translation of the original, grappling with the long sentences and convoluted word orders that are made possible by the Finnish language’s fifteen cases. The result was a comprehensible English text that served as ‘raw material’ for Emily to work with. I believe that the finished product achieves the aim of translating the spirit of this original work.”

Emily on translating The Brothers:

“The Brothers is a powerful and atmospheric book. Dense, dark, and poetic, it takes us right into the minds of its characters, who speak to us directly in turn. It is taut and concentrated, but covers years in the lives of its protagonists, also taking in political and historical developments and vividly evoking a bleak, beautiful Finnish landscape. It is a short text, but it feels like a vast, sprawling epic.”

“One of the key tasks we faced was to hit on a convincing voice for each character. There’s the frank common sense and good humour of the Farmhand, with whose voice the narrative begins. Then there’s the rage and vulnerability of Henrik, which contrasts with the wry resignation of his brother Erik. There’s the dreamy lust of Anna, the woman who comes between them. Finding the right voices for all the characters has been both challenging and exciting.”

Peirene Press

 Meike & Maddy on Twitter

Asko Sahlberg(Wiki)

Modern Finnish Writers

Challenges Page.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

The independent Foreign Fiction Prize (#iffp)


This Prize honours the best work of fiction by a living author, that has been  translated into English from any other language and published in the UK. Uniquely, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize gives both the winning author and the translator equal status, with each receiving £5,000. The prize was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent with the first award going to the writer Orhan Pamuk and translator  Victoria Holbrook  for The White Castle (1990), the prize ran until 1995 before falling into abeyance. The prize was revived at the start of the new century (2000) with the support of Arts Council England, who continue to fund the award. Beginning in 2011 the administration of the prize was taken over by Booktrust, yet retains the "Independent" in it’s title, the 2011 prize was won by Santiago Rongagliolo and translator Edith Grossman for Red April.


The judges for this year's Prize are:


Freelance critic, feature writer and broadcaster Hephzibah Anderson
Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival
Jon Cook, Professor of Literature and Director of the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts at the University of East Anglia, and Chair of Arts Council England, East
Novelist, short story writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo
Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor of the Independent

IFFP shadow - Copy1
Stu from Winston’s dad has set up a shadow Jury that will post on books featured on the long list and eventually the shortlist, the jurors are Mark, LisaRob, Simon, KinnaStu, Tony and myself. The group’s aim is to post on all the books on the list in tandem with the official jury, following the same idea as Nick Barley & play our “part in helping them bring unique stories from other languages to a wider English-speaking audience.”





This Years Long list is

1Q84 Books 1 and 2    Haruki Murakami    Jay Rubin    Harvill Secker    Japanese
The events of 1Q84 take place in Tokyo during a fictionalized 1984, with the first volume set between April and June, the second between July and September, and the third between October and December.
“Fantastical elements woven into an otherwise realistic narrative.   The Leader levitates a clock; Tamaru can enter a locked apartment without a key, telepathy unites Tengo and Aomame, and there is a whole complicated mythology lying behind the activities of the Sakigake cult.” – Lisa
Alice    Judith Hermann    Margot Bettauer Dembo    The Clerkenwell Press    German
When someone very close to you dies your whole life changes. Everything is different. Alice is the central figure in these five inter-connected narratives, which tell of her life at times of loss.
Blooms of Darkness    Aharon Appelfeld    Jeffrey M. Green    Alma Books    Hebrew
The ghetto in which the Jews have been confined is being liquidated by the Nazis, and eleven-year-old Hugo is brought by his mother to the local brothel, where one of the prostitutes has agreed to hide him.
Dream of Ding Village    Yan Lianke    Cindy Carter    Constable and Robinson    Chinese
Set in a poor village in Henan province, it is a deeply moving and beautifully written account of a blood-selling scandal in contemporary China.
“So Dream of Ding Village is not just about the impact of HIV/AIDS, but more broadly about how rapid development in China is subverting traditional values to create a society based on the profit motive. “ –Lisa
 “One of China's most pre-eminent and controversial novelists, tackles the harrowing topic of AIDS in his country's impoverished rural regions Longlisted for the 2011 MAN Asian Literary Prize,” -Mark
From the Mouth of the Whale    Sjón    Victoria Cribb    Telegram Books    Icelandic
Jonas Palmason, a poet and self-taught healer, has been condemned to exile for heretical conduct, having fallen foul of the local magistrate. Banished to a barren island, I’m reading this at the moment & loving the dark  hallucinatory prose.
Hate: A Romance    Tristan Garcia    Marion Duvert and Lorin Stein    Faber & Faber    French
In a controversial first novel that took the French literary world by storm and won the Prix de Flore, Tristan Garcia uses sex, friendships, and love affairs to show what happens to people when political ideals come to an end.
New Finnish Grammar    Diego Marani    Judith Landry    Dedalus    Italian
One night at Trieste in September 1943, a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari, gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can identifying him.
“Now on the surface this book can be compared to Ondaatje’s English patient as the kernel that the story is from is similar a man is found in this case on a beach in Italy  his personnel effects leads to the belief he is Finnish ,although he can’t talk and has had some horrific injuries” – Stu

Next World Novella    Matthias Politycki    Anthea Bell    Peirene Press    German
“This novella deals with the weighty subjects of marriage and death, in an impressively light manner. Shifting realities evolve with a beautiful sense of irony and wit. It is a tone that allows us to reflect –without judgment – on misunderstandings, contradictory perceptions and the transience of life.” Meike Ziervogel
A professor wakes to find his wife has died of a stroke in the evening and he takes in the shock of the situation reading through the last notes that she was editing. As she usually edited his reports it is his material she was found slumped over. – Simon

Parrallel Stories    Peter Nadas    Imre Goldstein    Jonathan Cape    Hungarian
In 1989, the  year the Wall came down, a university student in Berlin on his morning run finds a corpse lying on a park bench & alerts the authorities. This classic police-procedural scene opens an extraordinary novel, a masterwork that traces the fate of myriad Europeans across the treacherous years of the mid-twentieth century
“This is a post modern book and like a classic post modern art the rule book of writing has been thrown out ,we drift from crime ,through highly erotic prose and into political drama” – Stu
Please Look After Mother    Kyung-sook Shin    Chi-Young Kim    Weidenfeld & Nicolson    Korean
Please Look After Mom is the story of a missing mother and her family, told from the shifting points of view of each of the family members. The novel tracks down the mother’s life of self-sacrifice, which coincided with Korea’s dramatic shift from a pre-modern to post-modern society
“Please Look After Mother' centres on the aftermath of the disappearance of So-nyo, an ailing wife and mother, who is separated from her husband in a Seoul subway station during a rare visit to the capital from her home in the countryside.” – Mark
“Hmm, perhaps I should have guessed that an ‘international best-seller’ with a million sales in Korea alone would be a disappointment…” – Lisa
“If you want a heart-warming story of family and what parents mean this is the book to read .I must admit I now can see why a million Koreans brought it .” – Stu
Professor Andersen's Night    Dag Solstad    Agnes Scott Langeland    Harvill Secker    Norwegian
Christmas Eve, and 55-year-old Professor Pål Andersen is alone, drinking coffee and cognac in his living room. Lost in thought, he looks out of the window and sees a man strangle a woman in the apartment across the street. This is an existential murder story.
Scenes From Village Life    Amos Oz    Nicholas De Lange    Chatto & Windus    Hebrew
A surreal and unsettling portrait of a village in Israel. A picture of the community takes shape across seven stories, in which a group of characters appear and return. Each villager is searching for something, yet in this almost dreamlike world nothing is certain, nothing is resolved
'Scenes From Village Life' is a strange book in every respect, oozing general unease, sprinkled with imponderables and actions devoid of answers.” - Mark

Seven Houses in France    Bernardo Atxaga    Margaret Jull Costa    Harvill Secker    Spanish
`a dark comedy about the vanity of human desires which deftly balances compassion and cynicism' ----Adrian Turpin, Financial Times. “This book will be compared to Conrad’s heart of darkness  and it has a lot in common with that book”-Stu
The Emperor of Lies    Steve Sem-Sandberg    Sarah Death    Faber & Faber    Swedish
“This extraordinary work of fiction is a historical novel in a deeper than the usual sense, since the author concedes that truth rather than fiction supplies the crucial detail that directs our moral vision . . . Sem-Sandberg’s success lies in the way he conveys the moral tragedy not in retrospect but in its duration.” -Timothy Snyder, The Times Literary Supplement
The Prague Cemetery    Umberto Eco    Richard Dixon    Harvill Secker    Italian
19th-century Europe—from Turin to Prague to Paris—abounds with the ghastly and the mysterious. Conspiracies rule history. Jesuits plot against Freemasons. Italian republicans strangle priests with their own intestines. French criminals plan bombings by day and celebrate Black Masses at night
 BookTrust   ANZ LitLovers LitBlog      RobAroundBooks         Inside Books   Winstonsdad’s Blog                  
ELEUTHEROPHOBIA  Kinna Reads 
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Friday, March 2, 2012

Early Sci-Fi, Nihon (にほん) Style .

   **************************    ****************************     ************************      *************************** 
Science fiction has been published in Japan  for over a hundred years, the first to really influence were the novels of Jules Verne, with the translation of Around the world in 80 days, published in 1878-1880, followed by his other works all of which were immensely popular. In fact the word kagaku shōsetsu (科学小説) was coined as a translation of "scientific novel" as early as 1886. Sci-Fi by japanese writers started to appear around the start of the twentieth century, with writers such as Shunro Oshikawa (1877-1914) and Junro Unno (1897-1949) who, inspired by Verne and H.G.Wells, wrote military style adventures combined with aspects of science, such as Oshikawa’ s The undersea Warship (1900) & Unno’s  The Floating Airfield (1938). Prior to world war two most japanese Science Fiction were pale imitations of western fiction, placing the emphasis on techno future, with it’s reliance on machinery to solve any problems and was considered a sub literary form, normally placed within the mystery genre. After the war with the American army an occupying force, the Japanese were introduced to a wide range of writers through the magazines & paperbacks carried by the G.I’s. Exposure to this material led to a widespread revival in the genre, followed by translations of the works of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, which both made the bestsellers listTHE UNDERSEA WARSHIP - Shunro Oshikawa .


Two major events occurred in the development of Japanese Sci-Fi in 1950’s, the first being the - now considered legendary -  fanzine Cosmic dust (Uchu-jin, 宇宙塵) was founded, although the first science fiction magazine in Japan was  Seiun (星雲) in 1954, but this was discontinued after only one issue. The second Hayakawa Shobo, began it’s series of Sci-Fi books and it’s Hayakawa's S-F Magazine (S-Fマガジン) with the February 1960 issue, appearing in bookshops at the end of 1959. Under the editorship of Masami Fukushima it started publishing translations of English Language stories, although later it would be prominent in the publication of original Japanese Science Fiction.

By the 1960’s Science Fiction’s popularity had increased to such an extent that in 1962 the first SF Convention (Nihon SF Taikai (日本SF大会 Japan SF Convention) was held in Tokyo, although originally the majority of the fiction published in this period was translations of works written in English, a new wave of Japanese writers were surfacing, with their own take on what Science fiction should be and were not content on just imitating western models.
SF Magazine (also known as Hayakawa's SF Magazine

After the Meiji Restoration of 1868 Japan went into a programme of modernisation, rapidly transforming itself into the nation it is today, possibly at a speed quicker than any other nation. This process has left it’s shadow on the culture and on the mind of the nation as a whole, giving rise to conflicting issues concerning the rise of modernity and the traditional Japanese values and is often reflected in it’s mainstream authors, with writers drawn up on both sides of the debate. Although represented as the literature of change and of the young, Science Fiction was in a perfect position to express the concerns of this dichotomy and, by referring to it’s own mythology combined with a technology that was in constant flux, the writers were able to reflect the uneasy alliance of the old and new. This new wave of writers, by reflecting the concerns prevalent in their nation, found expression on a wider stage, reflecting the concerns of a planet.
*
The first Japanese science fiction story to appear in English, was the short story Bokko-Chan by Shinichi Hoshi, which appeared in the June 1963 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The first Japanese Sci-Fi novel to be Translated into English was Inter Ice Age 4 (1970) by Kobo Abe, the first first single author collection was Shinichi Hoshi’s The Spiteful Planet And Other Stories (1978). The first Anthology of Japanese Science Fiction Short Stories translated into English wasthe-best-japanese-science-fiction-stories
The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories
Editors: John L. Apostolou and Martin H. Greenburg Publication Year: 1997
Publisher: Barricade Books

The Flood – Kobo Abe, Cardboard Box – Ryo Hanmura, Tansui – Ryo Hanmura, Bokko-Chan – Shinichi Hoshi, He----y, come on ou---t – Shinichi Hoshi, The Road to the Sea – Takashi Ishikawa, The Empty Field – Morio Kita, The Savage Mouth – Sakyo Komatsu, Take your Choice - Sakyo Komatsu,  Triceratops – Tensei Kono, Fnifmum – Taku Mayumura, Standing Woman – Yasutaka Tsutsui, The Legend of the  Paper Spaceship – Tetsu Yano.

In the introduction to this anthology John L. Apostolou, gives us a brief history of this genre in Japan, some of which I’ve used here. He the goes on to say that  apart from a few exceptions, before this book it was nigh on impossible to find Japanese Science Fiction, making this anthology most peoples first encounter with Japanese SF. The aim is to introduce people to the fantastic writers, major authors in their own country such as Hoshi Shinichi, Hanmura Ryō, and Komatsu Sakyō, hopefully gaining them the recognition they deserve. The Best Japanese Science Fiction title is a bit of a misnomer, Speculative Fiction might have been a better name, there are no space battles, Aliens are thin on the ground, and  the science seems to be hidden or kept to a minimum, these are quiet tales. Still if you want an introduction to Japanese SF, this is still the place to start there are a couple of others (Speculative Japan 1 & 2) which I aim to read at some point, but this is the source, there are thirteen tales here and they all offer an interesting take on the genre.
Nihon Distractions (The Best Japanese Sci-Fi)
PDF, From science fictional Japan to Japanese science fiction
PDF Hoshi Shinichi & The Space Age Fable