I move to 2019 and another book from the Booker International longlist. You may ask how I choose the books for each year. It may be a translator, or just a book I fondly remember. This is an example of both. Jen Calleja is a great translator and has also gone into publishing. This was one of two books that hadn’t come out when the longlist of the Man Booker was announced. The publication date was brought forward for this book that was previously shortlisted for the German Book Prize (the German Booker). It is the fourth novel by Marion Poschmann. Two of her other novels have been on German book prize lists. Marion studied German philology, philosophy, and Slavic studies. She then taught German as part of a German-Polish project for primary school children. Since then, she has been a freelance writer living in Berlin and a member of German Pen. As part of writing this book, she spent three months in Japan.

A man discovered the great Japanese writer Basho. How he gets to discover Basho: by chance at the airport and he passes over the islands on the plane there. This is a classic take on the man in his mid-life crisis. Gilbert, the main character, has just discovered his wife is having an affair, so he heads off to Japan. He is a lecturer on Beard in cinema (could there be a less hipster lecturer title than this). He arrives at the airport and picks up a number of the classics of Japanese literature, including the works of Basho, especially his travel verse piece, Oku no Hosomich the long road to the north, which follows Basho’s journey to the Pine Islands, a book that was described as the soul of Japan. So as Gilbert tries to cope with his relationship with Mathilda, a strange one, he talks, then doesn’t talk, but then writes to her about the discovery of Basho, but also how he wound up on a station to find Yasho who also has a book about suicide. Yasho is trying to jump in front of a train when he meets Gilbert. The two of them set of to rediscover themselves and try and find the world that Basho described ending up at Matsushima, The Pine Island. This may be a tongue-in-cheek look at the book genre that talks about pilgrimage. The East has long been a subject in German literature. Herman Hesse wrote about Indian culture and a book about discovery, Journey to the East. This isn’t in that league. No, this is more a look at the modern obsession with pilgrimage or middle-age men escaping their world and discovering themselves.  From Martin Sheen in The Way: Doing the Way of St James in Spain or the likes of even someone like Bill Bryson and his old friend doing the Appalachian Trail. This book has the classic character of two leads, one in search of what his life means. Yosha, the man Gilbert saves, is this. Another is Gilbert, a man that needs to take time out of his life. Add a book that makes you want to pick up one of the greats of Japanese literature, Basho. Also, reconnecting with the world around us is another thread in the book. Similar to books like Rings of Saturn or A Whole Life, the latter is more so than Saturn. I enjoyed this. I like books that see folks discovering themselves and having a book that means something to them. I remember Herodotus’s histories in English patients meaning so much to Almasy or a book like Geert Mak’s book where he followed the route of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, like this book saw a world that is now gone. A fascinating book that would pass me by, except for The Man Booker International Prize.

Writer Marion Poschmann:

A prize-winning poet and novelist, she has won both of Germany’s premier poetry prizes, has been longlisted once and shortlisted twice for the German Book Prize and won, amongst others, the 2013 Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize, the first German Prize for Nature Writing 2017 and the 2018 Berlin Literature Prize for her prose. She is a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature and the German PEN Center. She lives in Berlin.

Translator Jen Calleja:

She is a writer, musician and literary translator from German. Calleja has translated works by authors including Wim Wenders, Michelle Steinbeck, Kerstin Hensel and Gregor Hens, and her translations have been featured in the New Yorker and the White Review. She was the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library and writes a column on literature in translation for the Brixton Review of Books. Her debut poetry collection Serious Justice (2016) is published by Test Centre. She lives in London.

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