TOKYO: Fragmentos
Leopold Federmair
Tokyo. Fragments is the first work published in Spain by Leopold Federmair, an Austrian writer and translator born in 1957 and who has lived in Japan since 2002.
In this book, structured as a literary walk through contemporary Japan, we visit Kenzaburo Oé, we go to the cinema, we enter hotels, shops, bars or the hospital where Mayuko, the author’s daughter, has been admitted, we travel by train , we walk through parks or residential areas, and we also find comments on literature and music or reflections on the educational system, urban planning or culture of Japan. As Daniel F. Hübner, professor at the University of Zaragoza, points out in his epilogue, “all of this has a place here, in this walk that acquires the status of a literary genre in that it allows unity to be provided to the various fragments in which, as chapters, the book is divided. But, as Professor Hübner also points out, “this book not only offers its readers a fascinating journey through the multiple fragments into which the kaleidoscopic reality of contemporary Japan is decomposed. Its interest also lies in what it reveals about the person – or character – who is present in these pages, that walker who observes a city and its people with the innocent wisdom of a girl and the extensive baggage of experiences and cultural references of a cosmopolitan writer in full creative maturity. And, ultimately, it is an invitation to join that slow and attentive way of moving through life and getting to know our world, near or far: walking, seeing, reading, thinking, writing. The author: Leopold Federmair was born in 1957 in the small town of Wels, in Upper Austria, and began his studies in German Studies, Journalism and History at the University of Salzburg in 1975.
His personal and professional journey has taken him to live and work in countries such as France, Italy, Hungary and Argentina. Since 2002 he has resided in Japan. In addition to novels and stories, he has published essays, works of literary criticism and translations from Italian, French, Spanish and Japanese (among the authors he has translated are Francis Ponge, Michel Houellebecq, José Emilio Pacheco, Ricardo Piglia, Ryū Murakami and Leonardo Sciascia). He also regularly contributes to periodicals and literary blogs (“Neue Zürcher Zeitung”, “Der Standard”, “Falter” or “Literatur und Kritik”, among others). In 2011 he received the Traslatio award (Austrian National Prize for Literary Translation). Despite his extensive work, which has made Federmair one of the most relevant Austrian authors in the current literary panorama of his country and in the German language, and the author’s links with our language, to date his only book Translated into Spanish it was a small volume of stories, Freilassing, published by the Mexican publishing house Cuadrivio.
Source: https://algunoslibrosbuenos.com/tokyo-fragmentos
