PAUL CELAN AND THE TRANS-TIBETAN ANGEL by Yoko Tawada

Translated by Susan Bernofsky

Few authors leave me as thoroughly bamboozled as Yoko Tawada. No matter how many times I try, I can’t seem to make heads or tails of her work, despite being consistently mesmerised by it. Five or so books in and I’m still none the wiser, because Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel* might be her most confounding one yet.

Covid restrictions have lifted in Berlin. Patrik, who likes to think of himself as a character he calls “the patient”, has quit his job and plans to present a paper on Celan’s Threadsuns at a conference in Paris. Problem is, he can’t answer one simple question on the application: where he’s from. What follows is a brain mushing foray into questions of identity and belonging, anchored in Celan’s work but traversing the likes of Kafka, Feldenkrais, Strauss (Richard, not Johann), the Kabbalah and Chinese medicinal wisdom. He’s helped along the way by Leo-Eric Fu, who may or may not be an angel. Or real.

It’s a wild ride of flashing synapses, an intellectual puzzle par excellence. Well, that or a literary adaptation of the dream where you stand up to address the class only to realise you’re butt naked. Beats me.

*Also published as Spontaneous Acts in some territories.

#WomenInTranslationMonth

Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel by Yoko Tawada (Tr. Susan Bernofsky)
New Directions, 2024
131 pages