The Pine Islands

"It’s super quirky, this. A comic confrontation with mortality. It’s about a man who’s an expert in beards in films—a journeyman academic who thinks that his wife has been unfaithful to him, dreams it, and so takes off to Tokyo to find himself. There he meets somebody who’s trying to commit suicide, and together they travel to try to find the best location for this suicide. So it’s unexpected, the narrative, but makes a delightful book. Exquisitely written and exquisitely translated. One of the things that we really love about judging this prize is that because you have an author and a translator, you almost have double the energy there. I imagine it like a social dance. When you have a couple dancing, it’s kind of beautiful to watch. Both bring something to that dance. And this is one of those books where you really feel that; it really adds to the experience. That’s right. I think there’s a sort of idea that translators can either choose to just be mirrors of the work or to be activists, and actively engage and kind of improve, as in add to the work. That’s why it’s so central to have a translator on the panel who has understanding of nuances of that work. Inevitably, yes. We had books in 25 languages submitted for the prize, so we’d have to be a fairly extraordinary panel to speak all 25 of those! But I’m sure that’s the case and those are our limitations, but then what you have to do is then you have to inhabit the space as a reader; you have to try to use your own imagination to imagine the world that the author is trying to communicate. And feel if that’s both a fluid and a supple and a secure place that the translator has put you in to access that original work. Without exception, all of the shortlisted books—the translations—are wonderful works in and of themselves."