The Memoirs of a Polar Bear stars three generations of talented writers and performers—who happen to be polar bears

"In this masterful performance of ‘otherness,’ Tawada pushes us to feel the humming possibility between how things appear and what they could be."

"Tawada masterfully transports the reader to this place approaching transcendence, where language — so distinctly human, we suppose — brings us into imaginative intimacy with another kind of being."

"[T]he animal characters of Memoirs pursue a hybrid existence, refusing to romanticize the state of nature."

"A writer of scrupulous intensity."

"Memoirs gives us an often funny and intimate perspective on what it must be like to be a sentient bear in an overwhelmingly human world."

"In ‘Memoirs,’ when a polar bear walks into a bookstore or a grocery store, there are no troubles stemming from a lack of opposable thumbs. As with Kafka’s animal characters, we are freed to dislike them in the special way we usually reserve only for ourselves."

"For all the wonderful workings of plot and structure in Memoirs of the Polar Bear, what is truly affecting is Tawada's writing, which jumps off the page and practically sings."

"This novel is ''doubly translated'' in the sense that Yoko Tawada first wrote it in Japanese and then translated it herself into German, from whence it was re-crafted into English. It even boasts an additional layer of translating, as it were, since the first part of the book is narrated by a Russian-speaking bear. The story itself follows three generations of polar bears across the world in a powerful tale of both family and isolation."

"The empathy for these magnificent bears, from the cruelty foisted on them, of which they are unaware, to the love poured on them by those who care for them just drips off the page."

"Tawada bears out the truth that tongues can also bring inventive thoughts to vibrant life."

"A distinguished contribution to the unique paranoid style of the new European novel."

"Ms Tawada brings her fine-nosed, soft-furred beasts to life... [Tawada] has a deadpan wit and disorienting mischief all her own, nimbly translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky."

"Yoko Tawada’s whimsical ursine family saga expresses a powerful sense of justice."

""Something about the way Tawada writes – and Bernofsky’s beautiful translation stays true to this – allows the reader to take the most surreal and fantastical elements of the work completely seriously. Not that this is an earnest text, on the contrary it’s deliciously whimsical and playful; but this doesn’t detract from the importance of the messages it carries. If anything, it’s proof that a different and unexpected perspective can be the most enlightening of all: it’s through the eyes of polar bears that we see humanity most clearly.""

"Her finest stories dramatize the fate of the individual in a mobilized world."

"Memoirs of a Polar Bear works on many levels, fizzing with ideas on exile, migration and love... questioning what it means to be human."

"Tawada asks us to see writing from an unusual perspective: it is like balancing on a ball, or hunting. Thus we’re forced to see writing not just as a cerebral art but a physical one, as well."

"The novel’s eldest bear describes writing as a ''''''''dangerous acrobatic stunt.'''''''' In Memoirs of a Polar Bear, Tawada executes this stunt with the effortless grace of a seasoned circus performer."

"As acrobatic with her writing as her polar bear subjects, Yoko Tawada walks a line between fantastical yet believable."

"Tawada’s stories agitate the mind like songs half remembered or treasure boxes whose keys are locked within."

"Tawada’s accounts of alienation achieve a remarkable potency."

"Strange, exquisite book."

Born in Tokyo in 1960, Yoko Tawada writes in both Japanese and German: she has received the Akutagawa, Kleist, Lessing, Noma, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Tanizaki prizes, as well as the Goethe Medal. Her novel The Emissary won the National Book Award. Rivka Galchen in the New York Times Magazine hailed her work as “magnificently strange.” For New Directions, Susan Bernofsky has translated Yoko Tawada’s Where Europe Begins, The Naked Eye, and Memoirs of a Polar Bear (winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation), eight titles by the great Swiss-German modernist Robert Walser, and five books by Jenny Erpenbeck, including The End of Days (winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize). She is the author of Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser, and teaches at Columbia University, where she also directs the literary translation program.