The Emissary

Beautiful and haunting, meditation on ability, parenthood and intergenerational relationships. Every other page has a turn of phrase that is liable to wow. Lightness and heaviness mix freely in a brief novel that doesn't overstay its welcome.

This review, despite using insulting words, is entirely written with awe and love.

The story is filthy and disgusting. People spontaneously change sex, the world is polluted, they eat bugs, society is regressive, the youth age unnaturally fast and suffer from many ills, government doesn't serve the people, and extreme isolation is everywhere. It's awful. What a terrible world to live in, and what a foreseeable future for us it is.

And that's what makes it so good. The author's creative way of treating these things as completely normal, through the eyes of its main characters, Yoshiro and Mumei, who are great-grandfather and great-grandson.

Don't read more about this anywhere. Go in blind and read it. It's amazing.

Such a strange little book

es una narración casi totalmente descriptiva y aunq eso está bien y me gusta la prosa tengo la sensación de que le falta algo (me aburrió un poco)

Broke my heart and stitched it back up, as if to remind me hearts are to be broken and to heal.

I felt the love for his great-grandchild, and Mumei's abject joie de vivre and youthful sensibility. I loved the talk of linguistics, culture, and geography. The substantial topics of isolation, as a nation and an individual, foreign-ness, change, enduring, vulnerable populations, the stuff of life had me captivated.