Three Streets Yoko Tawada Margaret Mitsutani Translation by Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani (translation) 9780811229319, 0811229319, 2020012674 instant download after payment.

— J.W. McCormack, The New Left Review

“In her latest work of fiction Three Streets, Tawada brings her remarkable intelligence & linguistic playfulness to bear on the cityscape of Berlin itself – or, more specifically, its former East. On Kollwitzstraße, Majakowskiring & Puschkinallee, Tawada conjures a series of ghostly encounters with the past, present & supernatural possibilities of our history-heavy city. This klein aber fein addition to Tawada’s oeuvre, translated elegantly by Margaret Mitsutani, compresses plenty of its author’s trademark offbeat brilliance into a pleasingly short format.

— Alexander Wells, Exberliner

Yoko Tawada—winner of the National Book Award—presents three terrific new ghost stories, each named after a street in Berlin

The always astonishing Yoko Tawada here takes a walk on the supernatural side of the street. In “Kollwitzstrasse,” as the narrator muses on former East Berlin’s new bourgeois health food stores, so popular with wealthy young people, a ghost boy begs her to buy him the old-fashioned sweets he craves. She worries that sugar’s still sugar—but why lecture him, since he’s already dead? Then white feathers fall from her head & she seems to be turning into a crane . . . Pure white kittens & a great Russian poet haunt “Majakowskiring”: the narrator who reveres Mayakovsky’s work is delighted to meet his ghost. And finally, in “Pushkin Allee,” a huge Soviet-era memorial of soldiers comes to life—and, “for a scene of carnage everything was awfully well-ordered.” Each of these stories opens up into new dimensions the work of this magisterial writer.