Scan barcode
A review by jmm
Mister Aufziehvogel by Haruki Murakami
3.0
I enjoyed parts of this book (especially the story around Lieutenant Mamiya, Cinnamons character) but fail to see, how many of the other parts of this story are tied together (Malta and Creta Kanos existence, the meaning of Torus exchanges with May Kasahara.
Many of the motifs encountered in this book (the world that can only be entered from the bottom of the well, the work that Nutmeg and him are doing, the blue mark) might somehow connect to japanese folklore, but to me they are "a riddle I still have to solve".
The call of the windup bird seems to me to indicate the loss of free will and destiny taking over. Sometimes the call of the windup bird coincides with horrible events, such as the killing of the soldiers disguised in baseball clothing. But in other parts the windup bird calls out at seemingly random points in the story with no apparent reason of special meaning.
Because some of these things bugged me more than they should, I read up on the translation history, and it seems that some of my irks with this story could be due to the parts left out during the initial english translation (as the german translation I read was based on this one).
[careful, minor rant on edits during translation ahead]
It seems like the major turning point for Toru's character, when he starts to take charge of his situation, was left out, because it was tied to the story of Creta asking him to leave Japan with her:
> I cannot run away, and should not run away. That was the conclusion I reached. No
> matter where I might go, that would always chase me down. No matter how far.
This also explains why the existence of the Kano sisters was not clear to me at first. Creta Kano originally held a much more prominent role but was demoted to a minor characters, because the translator thought "the clairvoyant KanÅ sisters detract from the book".
What I conclude from this experience is that for future books that are translated, I need to research first, how closely those translations follow the original. I'm not saying that translators in general are wrong when they take some freedom in the translation, but it definitively detracted from my experience of this book.
Especially when editors/translators cut or rearrange the book, because of some bs marketing reason ("we cannot sell something that exceeds some arbitrary length"), this almost always cripples the story in some way. Do what you are told to (publish the book or not) and please leave the content of what you are publishing up to the original author.
Many of the motifs encountered in this book (the world that can only be entered from the bottom of the well, the work that Nutmeg and him are doing, the blue mark) might somehow connect to japanese folklore, but to me they are "a riddle I still have to solve".
The call of the windup bird seems to me to indicate the loss of free will and destiny taking over. Sometimes the call of the windup bird coincides with horrible events, such as the killing of the soldiers disguised in baseball clothing. But in other parts the windup bird calls out at seemingly random points in the story with no apparent reason of special meaning.
Because some of these things bugged me more than they should, I read up on the translation history, and it seems that some of my irks with this story could be due to the parts left out during the initial english translation (as the german translation I read was based on this one).
[careful, minor rant on edits during translation ahead]
It seems like the major turning point for Toru's character, when he starts to take charge of his situation, was left out, because it was tied to the story of Creta asking him to leave Japan with her:
> I cannot run away, and should not run away. That was the conclusion I reached. No
> matter where I might go, that would always chase me down. No matter how far.
This also explains why the existence of the Kano sisters was not clear to me at first. Creta Kano originally held a much more prominent role but was demoted to a minor characters, because the translator thought "the clairvoyant KanÅ sisters detract from the book".
What I conclude from this experience is that for future books that are translated, I need to research first, how closely those translations follow the original. I'm not saying that translators in general are wrong when they take some freedom in the translation, but it definitively detracted from my experience of this book.
Especially when editors/translators cut or rearrange the book, because of some bs marketing reason ("we cannot sell something that exceeds some arbitrary length"), this almost always cripples the story in some way. Do what you are told to (publish the book or not) and please leave the content of what you are publishing up to the original author.