Mira Mason 10/9/22 Mira Mason 10/9/22

The Trees Witness Everything

The first thing you will notice about The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang is the shape of the book. An oddly tall, unusually narrow volume, it sticks out on any bookshelf you put it, among any stack of books it lies. It feels odd in the hands, as if it is both too much to hold but not enough to grasp. And when you do open it, another detail will strike you on the very first page: there are two poems, not one. A choice that defies the usual formatting of volumes of poetry, where each poem starts its own page.

Panagiota Stoltidou 5/1/22 Panagiota Stoltidou 5/1/22

Scattered All Over the Earth

Scattered All Over the Earth, the first installment of a trilogy by Japanese novelist Yoko Tawada, opens on the image of Knut, a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, flipping through the channels on his TV and dozing off to its unintelligible hubbub. It is in this sluggish position that he chances upon the live recording of a studio program and gradually realizes that the panelists speaking are all people whose birth countries no longer exist. Though eager to change the channel – “this was much too heavy to relax to” – he practically slides off the sofa when the face of a young woman resembling an anime heroine appears on his screen.