Friday, February 20, 2015

English Translation of New Murakami Story in this Week's New Yorker

This week's New Yorker (February 23) published a translation of the story "Kino" from Murakami's newest anthology, Onna no inai otokotachi. The story was translated by Philip Gabriel. This is the third of the six stories from the book that has appeared in English: "Yesterday," also translated by Philip Gabriel, was published in June 2014, and "Scheherezade," translated by Ted Goossen, appeared in October.  It makes one wonder if the whole anthology will be translated into English and come out as a book, or whether the remaining three stories will continue appearing in the New Yorker every four months or so.

That it will be done this way seems likely for another reason: English is not listed as one of the languages for which the rights have been sold for Onna no inai otokotachi on the Curtis Brown webpage (Curtis Brown is Murakami's agent for Europe).  Here is the list:


So far, only one short story collection by Murakami appeared "unchanged" in English: after the quake (Kami no kodomotachi wa mina odoru, 2000), which came out in 2002 in Jay Rubin's translation. The other anthologies of Murakami short stories -- The Elephant Vanishes (1993, Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin, trans.) and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, trans.) -- both included stories selected from several different Japanese anthologies, chosen by the translators and the author.



                     



(The middle illustration is by Merlin, the photographs in the first and third are by Michael Marcelle. )

This is how "Kino" starts: 

To read the whole story, go to: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/kino