Oh, Tama!
A Mejiro Novel
Mieko Kanai author Paul McCarthy translator Tomoko Aoyama translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Stone Bridge Press
Published:9th May '19
£12.99
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
- Galleys/e-galleys to national media outlets, trade publications, audience-focused websites and reviewers, selected booksellers, literary magazines and bloggers, especially those focusing on works in translation, such as Conversational Reading, Literary Saloon, This Space, Three Percent, Translationista, Center for the Art of Translation, Words without Borders, Translator’s Home Companion, and more.
- Galleys/e-galleys also sent to AV Club, Book Forum, Book Riot, Booklist, BookPage, Choice Book Reviews, Foreword, Library Journal, Lithub, Longitude, Midwest Book Review, Panels, Paste, Portland Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Rain Taxi, San Francisco Book Review, SF Chronicle, Shelf Awareness, The Common Magazine, The Guardian, The LA Review of Books, The New York Journal of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and more.
- Digital galleys on Edelweiss
- Special outreach for reviews and interviews with the translator to English-language Japanese media including NHK, The Japan Times, The Asahi Shimbun, Japan Today and more.
- Spcecial outreach to literature publications and journals such as The American Literary Review, Chicago Review, Lit Hub, New York Journal of Books, The Literary Review, World Literature Review, and more.
- Academic outreach to Japanese studies and Literature departments.
- Social media marketing with excerpts from the book on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit and target audience focused forums.
A deeply eccentric novel about lives and connections—and a cat of course—in 1980s Tokyo: witty, offbeat, and strangely profound.
Oh, Tama! describes the haphazard lives of Natsuyuki Kanemitsu and his loosely connected circle of dysfunctional acquaintances and family. Natsuyuki is prevailed upon by his friend Alexandre, an occasional porn-film actor, to adopt the very pregnant cat Tama, who gives birth and remains throughout the novel as a silent observer of her human hosts. Further complications arise surrounding the mystery of who the father of Alexandre's sister Tsuneko's unborn child is, with Tsuneko (a bar owner) happy to collect money from anyone who may be responsible. One of these possible dads turns out to be Natsuyuki's half-brother, abandoned and forgotten long ago as easily as Tama has parted with her kittens. A "fast and comedic novel," Oh, Tama! plays out against a backdrop of cramped apartments and cheap food and drink where everyone seems to have an opinion on film, photography, and fashionable French art theory. It is part of the author's esteemed series of "Mejiro" novels, named after the northwest area of Tokyo that so richly informs their urbanity and outlook.
About the Author
"[Mieko Kanai is] not interested in describing objects; she wants to accentuate their amorphous nature."--Sofia Samatar, Paris Review
“Kanai's stories remind me of Italo Calvino or Jorge Luis Borges, with their stylistically vague flatness yet strong character-driven underpinnings… I highly recommended them and look forward to more.”—Todd Shimoda, Asian Review of Books
Reviews of Oh, Tama!
“A comic masterpiece in a brilliant translation that captures the verbal acrobatics of the original with wit and warmth. Oh, Tama! made me laugh so much people were staring at me in the subway. One of the funniest books I have ever read.”—Janine Beichman, recipient, National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship, 2018-2019 and Translator of Ōoka Makoto, Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets
“Oh, Tama! is a zany sendup of family life, featuring a pregnant cat, an absent though pregnant bar owner, a freelance photographer, and assorted semi-relatives who drop by to cuddle the cat and strain the photographer’s hospitality. Kanai Mieko is one of Japan’s leading authors, and her sly mix of high-minded ideas with earthy humor has been perfectly captured in this lively translation.”—Phyllis Birnbaum, translator of Heaven and Hell by Takarabe Toriko
"An enticing novel and one that allows the reader to envelop herself in the strange sights, sounds, and tastes of this group of Japanese characters."—Janet Mary Livesey, World Literature Today
". . . philosophical speculation and mind-bending textual play give way to a more light-hearted look at how people make their way in the contemporary world. . . . Kanai delineates this territory not with drama and histrionics, but with a sharp eye on events that are never important in themselves, but always wittily observed. Translators Tomoko Aoyama and Paul McCarthy capture the sly smile that is surely present in Kanai’s Japanese original."—David Cozy, Japan Times
Reviews for Word Book
“Kanai has an ephemeral sensuality that offsets and complements her modulated voices, who guide you through mini epics in this crisp, cool collection.”—Bret McCabe, Baltimore City Paper
“Realities shift and are at once dreamlike and tangible. The range of subject matter and register is dazzling.”—Steve Finbow, Japan Times
"These stories demand attentive reading, although, as with a David Lynch film, it seems the solution to the puzzle will always be just beyond reach; but also like in Lynch’s films, the payoff is in trying to unravel the mystery, and in the beauty of the journey."—Literary Review
"The brilliance of this collection completely caught me off guard, explorations of relationships lost, meditations on authorship, examination of events, that skip from dream, to memory, from childhood to adulthood,and pass from generation to generation, memories that seem to hover and exist in some other ethereal realm."—Zoran Rosko
ISBN: 9781611720518
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
184 pages