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Harlequin Butterfly
Successful entrepreneur A.A. Abrams is pursuing the enigmatic writer Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, who appears to have the ability to write expertly in the language of any place they go. Abrams sinks endless resources into finding the writer, but Tomoyuki Tomoyuki always manages to stay one step ahead, taking off moments before being pinned down.
But how does the elusive author move from one place to the next, from one language to the next? Ingenious and dazzling, Harlequin Butterfly unfurls one puzzle after another, takings us on a mind-bending journey into the imagination.
But how does the elusive author move from one place to the next, from one language to the next? Ingenious and dazzling, Harlequin Butterfly unfurls one puzzle after another, takings us on a mind-bending journey into the imagination.
105 pages, Paperback
First published January 26, 2012
23 people are currently reading
1519 people want to read
About the author
Toh EnJoe
41 books29 followersToh EnJoe (Japanese: 円城 塔 Hepburn: Enjō Tō, pen name) (born September 15, 1972) is a Japanese author. His works are usually literary fiction, speculative fiction or science fiction.
Born in 1972 in Sapporo, he graduated from the physics department of Tohoku University, then went on to the graduate school at University of Tokyo and received Ph.D. for a mathematical physical study on the natural languages. He worked as a post-doc researcher at several research institutes for seven years, then abandoned the academic career in 2007 and found a programmer job at a software firm (resigns in 2008 to become a full-time writer).
In 2006, he submitted Self-Reference ENGINE to a science-fiction novel contest Komatsu Sakyō Award. Although it did not win the award (none did in this year), it was published from Hayakawa Shobō in 2007. At almost same time, his short story Obu za bēsbōru ("Of The Baseball") won the contest of literary magazine Bungakukai, which became his debut in literary fiction.[3]
His literary fictions are often dense with allusions. Labyrinthine annotations were added to "Uyūshitan" when it was published in book form in 2009, where there were none when published initially in literary magazine. Often, his science fiction works take motif from mathematics. The narrator of "Boy's Surface" (2007) is a morphism, and the title is a reference to a geometrical notion. In "Moonshine" (2009), natural numbers are sentient through a savant's mind's eye in a field of the monster group.
Project Itoh's Genocidal Organ was also a finalist of Komatsu Sakyō Award contest and published from Hayakawa Shobō in 2007, along with Enjoe's Self-Reference ENGINE. Since then they often appeared together at science fiction conventions and interviews, and collaborated in a few works, until Itoh's death of cancer in 2009.
At the press conference after the announcement of Enjoe's Akutagawa Prize in January 2012, he revealed the plan to complete Itoh's unfinished novel Shisha no teikoku. It was published in August 2012, and received the Special Award of Nihon SF Taisho.
Born in 1972 in Sapporo, he graduated from the physics department of Tohoku University, then went on to the graduate school at University of Tokyo and received Ph.D. for a mathematical physical study on the natural languages. He worked as a post-doc researcher at several research institutes for seven years, then abandoned the academic career in 2007 and found a programmer job at a software firm (resigns in 2008 to become a full-time writer).
In 2006, he submitted Self-Reference ENGINE to a science-fiction novel contest Komatsu Sakyō Award. Although it did not win the award (none did in this year), it was published from Hayakawa Shobō in 2007. At almost same time, his short story Obu za bēsbōru ("Of The Baseball") won the contest of literary magazine Bungakukai, which became his debut in literary fiction.[3]
His literary fictions are often dense with allusions. Labyrinthine annotations were added to "Uyūshitan" when it was published in book form in 2009, where there were none when published initially in literary magazine. Often, his science fiction works take motif from mathematics. The narrator of "Boy's Surface" (2007) is a morphism, and the title is a reference to a geometrical notion. In "Moonshine" (2009), natural numbers are sentient through a savant's mind's eye in a field of the monster group.
Project Itoh's Genocidal Organ was also a finalist of Komatsu Sakyō Award contest and published from Hayakawa Shobō in 2007, along with Enjoe's Self-Reference ENGINE. Since then they often appeared together at science fiction conventions and interviews, and collaborated in a few works, until Itoh's death of cancer in 2009.
At the press conference after the announcement of Enjoe's Akutagawa Prize in January 2012, he revealed the plan to complete Itoh's unfinished novel Shisha no teikoku. It was published in August 2012, and received the Special Award of Nihon SF Taisho.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews
February 29, 2024
Echoes of writers like Haruki Murakami, Philip K. Dick and Borges are detectable throughout Toh EnJoe’s elliptical, enigmatic but hypnoptic novella. On the surface the plot’s fairly straightforward, we’re presented with a translation of a story by elusive author Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, someone who leaves work littered across the globe, a polyglot who produces fiction in an unprecedented range of languages. A person nobody has ever knowingly met and managed to identify as the author of these strange pieces. Now, a privately-funded institute bankrolls agents to travel in pursuit of Tomoyuki and Tomoyuki’s work and to file annual reports on their progress.
But the ultimate meaning of Toh Enjoe’s elegant, impressively-structured, piece is as difficult to pin down as Tomoyuki. EnJoe’s fluid narrative hints at ideas about authorship, literary fixations, mathematics – one theory suggests Tomoyuki’s producing mathematical theorem disguised as literature – to nonsense fiction and the industries that obsessively feed off writing and writers. But EnJoe’s also delving into issues of creativity, inspiration, and communication, webs of meaning both literal and metaphorical. This works wonderfully too as a commentary on EnJoe. EnJoe’s an award-winning author who writes under a pseudonym, known for boundary-breaking, metafictional storytelling – a judge on a prize panel assessing his work reputedly called it ‘impenetrable’, although EnJoe still went on to win. EnJoe’s background is in physics and mathematics, and a number of the images and concepts running through this call to mind writers with similar backgrounds, whose work is equally cryptic - from Lewis Carroll to Felix Hausdorf aka Paul Mongré to the oddly-secretive E.T. Bell who wrote speculative fiction as John Taine. Translated by David Boyd.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Pushkin Press for an ARC
But the ultimate meaning of Toh Enjoe’s elegant, impressively-structured, piece is as difficult to pin down as Tomoyuki. EnJoe’s fluid narrative hints at ideas about authorship, literary fixations, mathematics – one theory suggests Tomoyuki’s producing mathematical theorem disguised as literature – to nonsense fiction and the industries that obsessively feed off writing and writers. But EnJoe’s also delving into issues of creativity, inspiration, and communication, webs of meaning both literal and metaphorical. This works wonderfully too as a commentary on EnJoe. EnJoe’s an award-winning author who writes under a pseudonym, known for boundary-breaking, metafictional storytelling – a judge on a prize panel assessing his work reputedly called it ‘impenetrable’, although EnJoe still went on to win. EnJoe’s background is in physics and mathematics, and a number of the images and concepts running through this call to mind writers with similar backgrounds, whose work is equally cryptic - from Lewis Carroll to Felix Hausdorf aka Paul Mongré to the oddly-secretive E.T. Bell who wrote speculative fiction as John Taine. Translated by David Boyd.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Pushkin Press for an ARC
October 31, 2024
I'm gonna be honest: I kind of have no clue what I just read. But I liked it? I think this book would be even better on a re-read (and it's only 100 pages so that's totally doable). It reads like a little puzzle and each chapter you get a new piece but you aren't quite sure where it goes until you finish and even then it takes some effort to put it all together. Maybe the point isn't to try and even piece it all together but enjoy the process, the struggle, the ideas, the creativity.
Basically this book is sort of about an author named Tomoyuki Tomoyuki who is able to go to a place and quickly learn the language and write a story in that language. Then they leave and are nearly impossible to track down. Sort of like a literary Banksy. No one really knows who the author is and where they are at any given time. But A.A. Abrams is trying to track the author down and will go to great lengths to try and collect all of their scattered works and piece together the puzzle of who this author is.
But really the book is about so much more than that. It's about language, translation, the malleability of our minds, travel, creativity, ideas and more.
I feel like people just have to experience this book for themselves, and try to not cling too hard to conventions of what a novel is and instead experience this book for what it is: a journey. If you like short weird little books, especially translated books and Japanese fiction, I'd give this one a shot! I think I'll revisit it someday and see if I uncover more from within its labyrinthine pages.
Basically this book is sort of about an author named Tomoyuki Tomoyuki who is able to go to a place and quickly learn the language and write a story in that language. Then they leave and are nearly impossible to track down. Sort of like a literary Banksy. No one really knows who the author is and where they are at any given time. But A.A. Abrams is trying to track the author down and will go to great lengths to try and collect all of their scattered works and piece together the puzzle of who this author is.
But really the book is about so much more than that. It's about language, translation, the malleability of our minds, travel, creativity, ideas and more.
I feel like people just have to experience this book for themselves, and try to not cling too hard to conventions of what a novel is and instead experience this book for what it is: a journey. If you like short weird little books, especially translated books and Japanese fiction, I'd give this one a shot! I think I'll revisit it someday and see if I uncover more from within its labyrinthine pages.
November 22, 2023
What a peculiar little book. I'm not sure where it started or ended. In fact I'm not entirely sure you couldn't just finish it and begin again immediately without noticing the join.
The story, such as it is, winds all over the place, changing characters names, gender, purpose, future and past. The eponymous butterfly may or may not be real as are the strange characters that inhabit the book.
The blurb suggests a book about a polyglot who writes strange books and a man called AA Abrams search for this strange author. The reality is so much stranger than that.
I am struggling to describe any of this book but I think that may well be the point, at least I hope so. Anyway if you like strange Japanese literary fiction then you will like this. I enjoyed it but (like Sayaka Murata's work) I couldn't exactly define why. I just did.
Thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the advance review copy.
The story, such as it is, winds all over the place, changing characters names, gender, purpose, future and past. The eponymous butterfly may or may not be real as are the strange characters that inhabit the book.
The blurb suggests a book about a polyglot who writes strange books and a man called AA Abrams search for this strange author. The reality is so much stranger than that.
I am struggling to describe any of this book but I think that may well be the point, at least I hope so. Anyway if you like strange Japanese literary fiction then you will like this. I enjoyed it but (like Sayaka Murata's work) I couldn't exactly define why. I just did.
Thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the advance review copy.
January 9, 2024
A novella about ideas, languages, writing, and travel. It swaps characters, points of views, I’m not sure I know who was the writer and who were the characters, it’s circular and very clever. Tiny butterfly nets for catching ideas, a writer who learns other languages and writes in them, agents sent around the world to find the mysterious writers works and much more. An enjoyable short read.
February 7, 2024
How do you finish, or come to rate a story, that has no beginning or end? This short story is bizarre; and yet its cadences, ideas of where ideas come from, musing on different languages, and general abstract ideas are quite intriguing. I suspect one could read this book ten times over and still be putting the pieces together in the end.
I’d you want an over the top literary story which loops on itself then grab this. For many it won’t be something they enjoy, or even really get (I’m not sure I fully grasp a lot of it myself) but it could perhaps make you think.
I wonder if this story could be as a way to break out of writers block? Would the story of stories and idea of ideas be a way to capture the butterfly and break the cycle of writers block? Or would you just get more frustrated with the situation if you got caught in the cyclical natural of the story itself?
There are probably thousands of musings like this that could be applied to this weird little piece. Alas, I have more things to read and cannot spend my life on this conundrum (such as our characters have). But gosh was it interesting to visit it for an hour or two.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
I’d you want an over the top literary story which loops on itself then grab this. For many it won’t be something they enjoy, or even really get (I’m not sure I fully grasp a lot of it myself) but it could perhaps make you think.
I wonder if this story could be as a way to break out of writers block? Would the story of stories and idea of ideas be a way to capture the butterfly and break the cycle of writers block? Or would you just get more frustrated with the situation if you got caught in the cyclical natural of the story itself?
There are probably thousands of musings like this that could be applied to this weird little piece. Alas, I have more things to read and cannot spend my life on this conundrum (such as our characters have). But gosh was it interesting to visit it for an hour or two.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
December 27, 2023
Got Borges written all over it. People might not like this novella but that’s okay because it was written specifically for me.
May 11, 2024
"What about a book that can only be read when traveling?"
I was equal parts intrigued and annoyed by this peculiar little work of absurdist fiction. The story flows quite naturally and reads very easily in this fluid translation, but clearly things don't make any sense. There is a man (but later it's a woman...or perhaps they don't exist?) who spends his life catching ideas on long haul flights with a silver net. But there is also an elusive writer that writes books that 'can only be read when...' and leaves behind manuscripts in all across the globe and in different languages.
It is for the reader to figure out the hidden meaning behind this apparent nonsense and I guess there are intelligent things to say about meaning, language art and ideas. Unfortunately I didn't always get it and have admittedly been too lazy or too uninterested to start exploring and mulling to find out.
I was equal parts intrigued and annoyed by this peculiar little work of absurdist fiction. The story flows quite naturally and reads very easily in this fluid translation, but clearly things don't make any sense. There is a man (but later it's a woman...or perhaps they don't exist?) who spends his life catching ideas on long haul flights with a silver net. But there is also an elusive writer that writes books that 'can only be read when...' and leaves behind manuscripts in all across the globe and in different languages.
It is for the reader to figure out the hidden meaning behind this apparent nonsense and I guess there are intelligent things to say about meaning, language art and ideas. Unfortunately I didn't always get it and have admittedly been too lazy or too uninterested to start exploring and mulling to find out.
March 28, 2024
A cyclical novella, a short piece of fiction of literary musings of ideas, languages, translations, the crafts of arts and the meaningful entity of how far language can evolve, dissolve, formed and interpreted. Its really fascinating to read albeit the twisted, sort of maze like narrative can be hard to grasp but certainly interesting. What intrigued me the most is the unknown of whats gonna comes next in the story as we are passed around from one narrator to another and this becomes sort of a puzzle for us to solve and also to think.
Opening with a man on an airplane trying to read a book he bought at the airport shop & failed to read it as he pondered on the growing stacks of his unread books & the struggle to read while in motion. A heavyset man named A A Abrams that was sitting beside him, waving a small golden threaded butterfly net conversed with him on the ideas of the floating ideas he captured using the net. He said the best place to capture these ideas is on an airplane as humans mindlessly thinking, the streams of thoughts hovering, floating in the aircraft, trapped and available for him to catch. Then jumped to a biography of a translator Tomoyuki Tomoyuki that wrote books in series of Books to be read while flying aka books that need to be read while doing a certain action or else these books will lost the meaning & purpose of its written & wont left as much as impact.
This novella is an ode to languages as well as mathematics, the beauty of words and meanings that can be derived from one's language. Its fascinating, sort of a fever dream with no direction but its one of a kind book that took you from one question to another creating this complex ideological of what truly makes a good literature. It can be philosophical & confusing but if u just enjoy the narrative all the way through, you will find this story to be quite clever.
Thank you to Edelweiss Book and Pushkin Press for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review
Opening with a man on an airplane trying to read a book he bought at the airport shop & failed to read it as he pondered on the growing stacks of his unread books & the struggle to read while in motion. A heavyset man named A A Abrams that was sitting beside him, waving a small golden threaded butterfly net conversed with him on the ideas of the floating ideas he captured using the net. He said the best place to capture these ideas is on an airplane as humans mindlessly thinking, the streams of thoughts hovering, floating in the aircraft, trapped and available for him to catch. Then jumped to a biography of a translator Tomoyuki Tomoyuki that wrote books in series of Books to be read while flying aka books that need to be read while doing a certain action or else these books will lost the meaning & purpose of its written & wont left as much as impact.
This novella is an ode to languages as well as mathematics, the beauty of words and meanings that can be derived from one's language. Its fascinating, sort of a fever dream with no direction but its one of a kind book that took you from one question to another creating this complex ideological of what truly makes a good literature. It can be philosophical & confusing but if u just enjoy the narrative all the way through, you will find this story to be quite clever.
Thank you to Edelweiss Book and Pushkin Press for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review
October 10, 2023
"niezbadane są ścieżki Pana", kochana ścieżki Pana są bardziej zbadane niż to na jakiej podstawie przyznają nagrodę Akutagawy
September 18, 2023
'"You went a little too far, didn't you? Drew too much attention to yourself. If people notice you, they start making up stories. Next thing you know, here we are."
Brilliant and 'ambitious' for the most part, but with a rather 'flimsy' execution, and an end too abrupt and loose for my taste. Or maybe it's open-ended; or perhaps, I just didn't 'get' it. But I enjoyed the ride though. Fun, little novella. Brief RTC later.
‘It's one thing to speak multiple languages and to be able to use them to get your ideas across in the moment, but it's another thing entirely to be able to express yourself in written form, pinning your ideas down in time and place. Writing is an acquired skill-apparently unnecessary for our survival, it's not something we're naturally equipped with as hominids.’
'I say "I feel like" because I don't actually remember. Where was I living? What did I learn there? From whom? Those memories are gone. At a minimum, I can't find them now. Even though I was sure I'd never been to this town before, I feel something like déjà vu.
Because what I forget isn't the memories. It's where I've kept them.
As I remember, I repeat. I have no recollection of having been in this situation before, but the stacks of paper in front of me are all the proof I need. These things were written at some point in time, though I can't say if that was in the past or in the future. Then I start writing again-from the beginning. From the sound. I learn to write, learn to count-the words break down and come together, the flour forms little clumps, the lemon juice curdles the milk, the minced meat starts to stick, and the onion caramelises in the pan.'
"I know this one: Latin. I had to memorise it when I was young. The inflections are all wrong, but this is no mistake. After all, they're consistently wrong. Someone's done this on purpose. Maybe they tried to squeeze it into the shape of a language they'd grown up with, or had certain expressions they were desperate to preserve... Or maybe they did it out of metric necessity..."
"Can we talk here, even if there's no language?" I ask haltingly.
March 30, 2024
EnJoe sets out to be baffling and certainly succeeds.
What materialises is a series of essays on thought rather than a novel, a meditation on language itself.
A. A. Abrams is a frequent flyer. When his plane is in the air, he removes a small net made of silver thread and attempts to capture fresh ideas from his fellow passengers. In no other location, he believes, are ideas as plentiful as those that come loose in the cabin of a jumbo jet.
Other passages seem to be narrated by other passengers. Abrams disappears from the book then, until near the end.
In another passage, author Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, is discussed. His books that are meant to be read only under specific circumstances, including, naturally, while traveling. Most have gone unpublished.
It’s a puzzle to find out if anything is actually going on, whether these passages are linked.
It’s a very short book, but requires far more concentration than would be usual. I suspect other readers will get different meanings from an extremely strange book.
What materialises is a series of essays on thought rather than a novel, a meditation on language itself.
A. A. Abrams is a frequent flyer. When his plane is in the air, he removes a small net made of silver thread and attempts to capture fresh ideas from his fellow passengers. In no other location, he believes, are ideas as plentiful as those that come loose in the cabin of a jumbo jet.
Other passages seem to be narrated by other passengers. Abrams disappears from the book then, until near the end.
In another passage, author Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, is discussed. His books that are meant to be read only under specific circumstances, including, naturally, while traveling. Most have gone unpublished.
It’s a puzzle to find out if anything is actually going on, whether these passages are linked.
It’s a very short book, but requires far more concentration than would be usual. I suspect other readers will get different meanings from an extremely strange book.
Read
February 26, 2024"...To read Harlequin Butterfly in David Boyd’s translation from Japanese adds another level of complexity to the tightly woven, metatextual novel. Language, as the narrator reflects, is ultimately about communication—'In a language without users, you’re free to write whatever you want.' At one point, the narrator asks the reader to
Harlequin Butterfly isn’t meaningless, though it is intentionally contradictory and at points incoherent. Boyd’s English translation nevertheless presents a satisfying and reflective read...
Harlequin Butterfly is a thought-provoking work of speculative fiction. When it won the Akutagawa Prize, perhaps Japan’s most highly-coveted literary award, in 2011, it was one of the only science fiction stories to have ever earned that honor. Literary sci-fi is a fairly new addition to the canon of Japanese fiction available in English; Boyd’s translation of Toe EnJoe’s novel is an important addition. Dense and sometimes baffling by design, Harlequin Butterfly is nevertheless a worthwhile read for the strength of its ideas about memory, art, and language itself."
Full review in the Asian Review of Books: https://asianreviewofbooks.com/conten...
Imagine a story—one that’s utterly meaningless, contradictory, incoherent. What if there’s a language somewhere in the world that would render that story logically sound?
Harlequin Butterfly isn’t meaningless, though it is intentionally contradictory and at points incoherent. Boyd’s English translation nevertheless presents a satisfying and reflective read...
Harlequin Butterfly is a thought-provoking work of speculative fiction. When it won the Akutagawa Prize, perhaps Japan’s most highly-coveted literary award, in 2011, it was one of the only science fiction stories to have ever earned that honor. Literary sci-fi is a fairly new addition to the canon of Japanese fiction available in English; Boyd’s translation of Toe EnJoe’s novel is an important addition. Dense and sometimes baffling by design, Harlequin Butterfly is nevertheless a worthwhile read for the strength of its ideas about memory, art, and language itself."
Full review in the Asian Review of Books: https://asianreviewofbooks.com/conten...
March 18, 2024
Don't quite know what to make of this, merits a re-read. Very original. Won the Akutagawa Prize.
Translated from Japanese by David Boyd.
Translated from Japanese by David Boyd.
December 7, 2023
This is one of those cases where a short story seems rather too long because of too much details at a go. Otherwise the writing is okay. However, you will feel awkward with the interaction of the characters. Well… the plot does not seem to work for me. When one character tries to overshadow most parts of a story, either it works well or it totally ruins it. Guess not the book for me.
Thank you, Pushkin Press, for the advance reading copy.
Thank you, Pushkin Press, for the advance reading copy.
October 10, 2025
W-what?
August 13, 2025
Idk, dude.
December 29, 2023
"Imagine a story - one that's utterly meaningless, contradictory, incoherent. What if there's a language somewhere in the world that would render that story logically sound? A language in which that story would become perfectly ordinary, all its strangeness concealed from view?"
For the first two-thirds of the book, I was quite lost. It reads in a jarring, strange, nonsensical way, leaving you unsure of what you read even a page or a paragraph before, and even more unsure of where it could possibly be going from there. It certainly seemed to be utterly meaningless, contradictory, incoherent...
and then, it clicked. There was a language, an 'aha moment' that translated the meaning & rendered the story (a bit more) logically sound. The conclusion brought it full circle (at least, I think it did?), and I enjoyed the way the writing kept me fully engaged and constantly thinking.
By the end, I was surprised to find myself enjoying it. This book won't be for everyone, but for those who enjoy lyrical, non-traditional structure, it will be as delightful as catching a butterfly in your net.
Thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the ARC!
3.75 ⭐s
For the first two-thirds of the book, I was quite lost. It reads in a jarring, strange, nonsensical way, leaving you unsure of what you read even a page or a paragraph before, and even more unsure of where it could possibly be going from there. It certainly seemed to be utterly meaningless, contradictory, incoherent...
and then, it clicked. There was a language, an 'aha moment' that translated the meaning & rendered the story (a bit more) logically sound. The conclusion brought it full circle (at least, I think it did?), and I enjoyed the way the writing kept me fully engaged and constantly thinking.
By the end, I was surprised to find myself enjoying it. This book won't be for everyone, but for those who enjoy lyrical, non-traditional structure, it will be as delightful as catching a butterfly in your net.
Thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the ARC!
3.75 ⭐s
November 25, 2023
3.5, rounding up. What a strange, strange book. The blurb, which describes a story about "the global pursuit of a mysterious writer who somehow writes in dozens of languages," is not necessarily inaccurate but also really doesn't get at what this book is doing or what it is like. There is indeed a mysterious writer, referred to as 'Tomoyuki Tomoyuki' though no one knows their real name (or, indeed, anything else about them); this writer leaves traces of their presence in many places, bits and pieces of writings left behind, each in the local language of the place these scraps are found. How does Tomoyuki do this? Are they a brilliant language learner, or is something else going on?
I am not even going to pretend that I fully understood this book. I found it beautiful, and I found myself captivated by it. I'm not quite sure what I just read, yet I'd read it again. Perhaps this book is best read under a cat? I did try this, and it didn't seem to help with my comprehension. (If this makes no sense to you and you're curious as to why reading a book with a cat on your lap might fundamentally alter the reading experience, well... you'll have to read this book and find out, though you may come away not knowing any more than when you started).
Content warnings: none, really.
Thank you to Pushkin Press & NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.
I am not even going to pretend that I fully understood this book. I found it beautiful, and I found myself captivated by it. I'm not quite sure what I just read, yet I'd read it again. Perhaps this book is best read under a cat? I did try this, and it didn't seem to help with my comprehension. (If this makes no sense to you and you're curious as to why reading a book with a cat on your lap might fundamentally alter the reading experience, well... you'll have to read this book and find out, though you may come away not knowing any more than when you started).
Content warnings: none, really.
Thank you to Pushkin Press & NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.
May 25, 2025
Harlequin Butterfly is the literary equivalent of staring at a blank canvas and being told it's a masterpiece — abstract, self-indulgent, and painfully hollow.
Reading this book felt like being trapped in a pretentious word salad where nothing makes sense but everything is somehow “deep.” The author throws metaphors around like confetti, hoping something will stick. Spoiler: nothing does. It’s all empty fluff wrapped in purple prose that tries so hard to be poetic, it forgets to be readable.
The characters are so bland and undercooked, it’s almost impressive. They float through the plot with no real purpose, no growth, and barely any personality. Calling them forgettable would be generous — they feel more like props than people.
Plot-wise, the book goes nowhere slowly. You keep waiting for something—anything—to happen, only to be rewarded with more flowery rambling and vague soul-searching that reads like someone’s unedited diary. And just when you think it might pick up, it either jumps to a random event or collapses into another loop of meaningless introspection.
If this book is supposed to be a metaphor for transformation, then it’s a caterpillar that never made it out of the cocoon. Pretentious, incoherent, and ultimately pointless — Harlequin Butterfly is not a book I’d recommend to anyone except maybe as a sleep aid.
Reading this book felt like being trapped in a pretentious word salad where nothing makes sense but everything is somehow “deep.” The author throws metaphors around like confetti, hoping something will stick. Spoiler: nothing does. It’s all empty fluff wrapped in purple prose that tries so hard to be poetic, it forgets to be readable.
The characters are so bland and undercooked, it’s almost impressive. They float through the plot with no real purpose, no growth, and barely any personality. Calling them forgettable would be generous — they feel more like props than people.
Plot-wise, the book goes nowhere slowly. You keep waiting for something—anything—to happen, only to be rewarded with more flowery rambling and vague soul-searching that reads like someone’s unedited diary. And just when you think it might pick up, it either jumps to a random event or collapses into another loop of meaningless introspection.
If this book is supposed to be a metaphor for transformation, then it’s a caterpillar that never made it out of the cocoon. Pretentious, incoherent, and ultimately pointless — Harlequin Butterfly is not a book I’d recommend to anyone except maybe as a sleep aid.
December 13, 2023
Thank you to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for providing access to an eARC to review!
I was expecting this to be more of a quest/mystery, but instead it was pretty abstract and I don't think I fully understood what it was trying to do. Once I finished it, I wasn't sure what the 'message' of the book was - or if it was even meant to have one.
I guess it's kind of about the commercialisation of creativity and how people can't just create for creation's sake anymore, but there wasn't much solid here. I'm not really sure of the audience I would recommend this to either, as since I got lost along the way I don't think it will be particularly memorable or something I'd like to try and reread to see if I could 'get' it on a second attempt.
Overall a strange little story, but not sure that its a 'good' strange...
I was expecting this to be more of a quest/mystery, but instead it was pretty abstract and I don't think I fully understood what it was trying to do. Once I finished it, I wasn't sure what the 'message' of the book was - or if it was even meant to have one.
I guess it's kind of about the commercialisation of creativity and how people can't just create for creation's sake anymore, but there wasn't much solid here. I'm not really sure of the audience I would recommend this to either, as since I got lost along the way I don't think it will be particularly memorable or something I'd like to try and reread to see if I could 'get' it on a second attempt.
Overall a strange little story, but not sure that its a 'good' strange...
August 16, 2024
Very strange, it almost feels like reading a dream, but it's also a really interesting consideration about language. Definitely one to re-read
July 24, 2025
Idk wtf I just read but I liked it
March 19, 2024
3.5 ☆
Harlequin Butterfly is a fascinating little piece of metafiction that, on the surface, follows the philanthropist A. A. Abrams as they become obsessed with discovering the identity of the polyglot author Tomoyuki Tomoyuki. But it’s also about so much more than that—it’s about translation and language, duplication and replication, about time, about fate and eventuality, and about paradox and the multilayered semantic possibilities of language.
If that sounds like a lot to jam into a novella that isn’t even 100 pages long, that’s because it is. And in large part Toh EnJoe is able to discuss so many ideas and probe at so many themes in such a slim volume because of the way that many of the typical elements that we come to expect from literature are absent here. The characters are somewhat slippery, with names and gender changing from chapter to chapter. The plot itself is equally amorphous, and while there is a persistent through line connecting the chapters to one another, the novella is constructed in such a way that chronology and order mean very little. In fact, I appreciated this book the most when I began to think of it as a series of loosely connected short stories that could likely be read from any arbitrary starting point.
And while all of this may seem like I’m trying to say that Toh EnJoe got sloppy with the plot and characters, I’m really trying to argue the opposite. Everything in this book felt remarkably intentional, in such a way that indicates a really great understanding of the underpinnings of literature to a point where he is able to deconstruct them so acutely. While reading, I got the sense that I wasn’t supposed to be taking the novella at face value so much as I was meant to be reflecting on what it means for something to be literature and on how the novella made me feel about language itself. There are some very interesting paradoxes developed throughout that get at this idea of taking a collection of words and sentences and paragraphs that are all grammatically sound but semantically impossible, which is an experience in literature that’s very tricky to explain but thrilling to witness.
The irony of reading a book that is so centered on semantics and meaning and the production of literature in translation is not lost on me. Strangely enough, the act of reading it in translation simultaneously weakens the original text and adds additional nuance and layering. There’s something ironic about translating a work in which, at one point, a character asks herself if it is even possible for a work in translation to maintain its original meaning and intelligibility. And so I, a reader who is reading a book in English that was originally written in Japanese, am forced to ask myself that question about the very book I hold in my hands. And that’s an exciting thing to think about when you’re reading!
There’s something very experimental about all of this. I don’t think I could necessarily say that I liked this book, but I also never felt like it was a book that is meant to be liked or disliked. It made me think, and ask questions, and consider my relationship to literature and language in really interesting ways. Short and sweet, but it still has me mulling over these ideas over a week after finishing it.
Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the e-ARC of this novella!
Harlequin Butterfly is a fascinating little piece of metafiction that, on the surface, follows the philanthropist A. A. Abrams as they become obsessed with discovering the identity of the polyglot author Tomoyuki Tomoyuki. But it’s also about so much more than that—it’s about translation and language, duplication and replication, about time, about fate and eventuality, and about paradox and the multilayered semantic possibilities of language.
If that sounds like a lot to jam into a novella that isn’t even 100 pages long, that’s because it is. And in large part Toh EnJoe is able to discuss so many ideas and probe at so many themes in such a slim volume because of the way that many of the typical elements that we come to expect from literature are absent here. The characters are somewhat slippery, with names and gender changing from chapter to chapter. The plot itself is equally amorphous, and while there is a persistent through line connecting the chapters to one another, the novella is constructed in such a way that chronology and order mean very little. In fact, I appreciated this book the most when I began to think of it as a series of loosely connected short stories that could likely be read from any arbitrary starting point.
And while all of this may seem like I’m trying to say that Toh EnJoe got sloppy with the plot and characters, I’m really trying to argue the opposite. Everything in this book felt remarkably intentional, in such a way that indicates a really great understanding of the underpinnings of literature to a point where he is able to deconstruct them so acutely. While reading, I got the sense that I wasn’t supposed to be taking the novella at face value so much as I was meant to be reflecting on what it means for something to be literature and on how the novella made me feel about language itself. There are some very interesting paradoxes developed throughout that get at this idea of taking a collection of words and sentences and paragraphs that are all grammatically sound but semantically impossible, which is an experience in literature that’s very tricky to explain but thrilling to witness.
The irony of reading a book that is so centered on semantics and meaning and the production of literature in translation is not lost on me. Strangely enough, the act of reading it in translation simultaneously weakens the original text and adds additional nuance and layering. There’s something ironic about translating a work in which, at one point, a character asks herself if it is even possible for a work in translation to maintain its original meaning and intelligibility. And so I, a reader who is reading a book in English that was originally written in Japanese, am forced to ask myself that question about the very book I hold in my hands. And that’s an exciting thing to think about when you’re reading!
There’s something very experimental about all of this. I don’t think I could necessarily say that I liked this book, but I also never felt like it was a book that is meant to be liked or disliked. It made me think, and ask questions, and consider my relationship to literature and language in really interesting ways. Short and sweet, but it still has me mulling over these ideas over a week after finishing it.
Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the e-ARC of this novella!
November 20, 2023
This was… confusing. As someone who loves translated literature, I was curious about this book about an elusive author, Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, who seemingly can write in any language. And while this book was interesting in that manner, what interested me more was the thoughts the book inspired about what/who an author is.
Frankly, I’m not entirely sure what happened in this book. Reading it felt a bit like analysing a semi-abstract painting, but of which you can only see a hundredth at a time. However, I enjoyed it. To continue the painting analogy, the small pieces, which I did not fully understand or connect, were beautiful to me. Mostly I would recommend Harlequin Butterfly to anyone who wants to be a writer, and is wanting more experience with non-linear, non-clear writing.
Something I thought about while reading (but maybe a thought that was dispelled by the ending?) was how the characters were written. You get to know them in the way you get to know a stranger on a plane. Maybe you chitchat about plane anxieties, or the food, and you get an understanding of them, their personality and some of their experiences. And then — you move on.
Frankly, I’m not entirely sure what happened in this book. Reading it felt a bit like analysing a semi-abstract painting, but of which you can only see a hundredth at a time. However, I enjoyed it. To continue the painting analogy, the small pieces, which I did not fully understand or connect, were beautiful to me. Mostly I would recommend Harlequin Butterfly to anyone who wants to be a writer, and is wanting more experience with non-linear, non-clear writing.
Something I thought about while reading (but maybe a thought that was dispelled by the ending?) was how the characters were written. You get to know them in the way you get to know a stranger on a plane. Maybe you chitchat about plane anxieties, or the food, and you get an understanding of them, their personality and some of their experiences. And then — you move on.
September 5, 2023
I went into Harlequin Butterfly expecting a certain dream-like quality. However, after two nights reading it cover to cover, I was left wondering exactly what I had read and what it was about. Sure, it was sort of a treatise on languages and literature, and the idea of a rich person chasing an elusive, every-moving author came across easily enough, but as for finishing the book with a concrete idea about what the author was trying to say... well, on that front I have to admit defeat. I am giving this book 3.5 stars. There were moments I liked and it was an interesting idea and presentation, but I think it's going to be too abstract and strange for many general readers. I am sure a lot of people will be left baffled by it.
August 12, 2024
Did I understand it? No. But I loved it. This is a book I will need to reread. Weird and surreal and interesting.
January 29, 2025
This slim book is a lightweight stunner. Don’t let the length deceive you, there’s a lot going on here that has nothing to do with the plot (which functions more as a means to an end) and everything to do with the epistemological questions about reading, writing, authorship, and the creative process. It reminded me a lot of Italo Calvino.
Long story short, a super rich person called Abrams is hunting down the world’s most elusive writer, alias Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, who goes around the world without staying in one place for very long, but each time leaving behind all kinds of work written in the local language or textiles made in the local style. Abrams’ institute hires people to travel and ‘catch’ with nets things related to Tomoyuki.
I read this as an attempt to pin down the unpin-able—instead of being content with the works as they stand, why is there a tendency to want to dissect the source? This parallels how Abrams encounters an imaginary butterfly (which lays idea eggs) and immediately traps it for scientific study, becoming obsessed with capturing ideas for generating profit. Tomoyuki is a direct foil to Abrams as s/he picks up textual languages to access a different kind of textuality in textiles and handmade crafts. The real end goal seems to be something tangible and very context-reliant, but Abrams is focused only on the symbolic.
Most interesting to me is the idea of the slippages in language allowing for a kind of do-over and re-interpretation: “a language with backdoors built into the grammar . . . All these backdoors left wide open: set phrases, relative pronouns, meter”—this text repeatedly points out how easily language can be exploited to resolve contradictions or rewrite a text, possibly damaging it, but also possibly creating something new.
Long story short, a super rich person called Abrams is hunting down the world’s most elusive writer, alias Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, who goes around the world without staying in one place for very long, but each time leaving behind all kinds of work written in the local language or textiles made in the local style. Abrams’ institute hires people to travel and ‘catch’ with nets things related to Tomoyuki.
I read this as an attempt to pin down the unpin-able—instead of being content with the works as they stand, why is there a tendency to want to dissect the source? This parallels how Abrams encounters an imaginary butterfly (which lays idea eggs) and immediately traps it for scientific study, becoming obsessed with capturing ideas for generating profit. Tomoyuki is a direct foil to Abrams as s/he picks up textual languages to access a different kind of textuality in textiles and handmade crafts. The real end goal seems to be something tangible and very context-reliant, but Abrams is focused only on the symbolic.
Most interesting to me is the idea of the slippages in language allowing for a kind of do-over and re-interpretation: “a language with backdoors built into the grammar . . . All these backdoors left wide open: set phrases, relative pronouns, meter”—this text repeatedly points out how easily language can be exploited to resolve contradictions or rewrite a text, possibly damaging it, but also possibly creating something new.
May 4, 2024
Ok... *checks notes*
Writing this review, I feel like the protagonist (OR protagonists ?) found in this novel with my words, thoughts, & feelings constantly morphing into something other & escaping me completely.
Harlequin Butterfly by Toh EnJoe is a book hard to describe but very worth a read. Interwoven with principles studied by its mathematician author, this is a work of fiction that I have learned from, not only because of the way it was written but also because of the dense amount of information EnJoe was able to include in so few pages.
Layered with surrealism & subtle humor, this piece of metafiction touches on many topics including translation & its effects on authorship, the intricacies of language, & the many sources we use for inspiration & creativity.
I enjoyed reading this novella. It is able to be reread again almost immediately, starting from any chapter & yielding new revelations with each read.
But as Toh EnJoe states in this text... "A book report by a third party has no value..." so maybe read it for yourself & see what you can take from it or make of it.
"It's strange. There are some things that no amount of data can prove, but only take a split second to confirm in person."
"As for the book itself, why should it mind who's doing the reading? So long as it gets read - that's all it takes for a book to do its job."
"Dostoevsky for people on the move. Pushkin for entrepreneurs..."
"It's one thing to speak multiple languages and to be able to use them to get your ideas across in the moment, but it's another thing entirely to be able to express yourself in written form, pinning your ideas down in time and place."
"I'm here to learn how it works, to bring it into myself."
"The next sentence is lying. The previous sentence is telling the truth."
and so on, and so forth...
Writing this review, I feel like the protagonist (OR protagonists ?) found in this novel with my words, thoughts, & feelings constantly morphing into something other & escaping me completely.
Harlequin Butterfly by Toh EnJoe is a book hard to describe but very worth a read. Interwoven with principles studied by its mathematician author, this is a work of fiction that I have learned from, not only because of the way it was written but also because of the dense amount of information EnJoe was able to include in so few pages.
Layered with surrealism & subtle humor, this piece of metafiction touches on many topics including translation & its effects on authorship, the intricacies of language, & the many sources we use for inspiration & creativity.
I enjoyed reading this novella. It is able to be reread again almost immediately, starting from any chapter & yielding new revelations with each read.
But as Toh EnJoe states in this text... "A book report by a third party has no value..." so maybe read it for yourself & see what you can take from it or make of it.
"It's strange. There are some things that no amount of data can prove, but only take a split second to confirm in person."
"As for the book itself, why should it mind who's doing the reading? So long as it gets read - that's all it takes for a book to do its job."
"Dostoevsky for people on the move. Pushkin for entrepreneurs..."
"It's one thing to speak multiple languages and to be able to use them to get your ideas across in the moment, but it's another thing entirely to be able to express yourself in written form, pinning your ideas down in time and place."
"I'm here to learn how it works, to bring it into myself."
"The next sentence is lying. The previous sentence is telling the truth."
and so on, and so forth...
April 10, 2024
4/5. This was such a fun book and I think it’s such a cool coincidence that I started and finished this book while traveling when a major part of section one is about starting and finishing books in airplanes. I barely had any idea what was going on but I was so pulled in by the concepts and characters and fun language that it held my attention entirely.
“I know it’s not the monotony of repetition—after all, repetition is hardly monotonous. Even when what you’re doing stays the same, the air around you is changing moment by moment. Even if Holbein and Fez are materially identical stitches, that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. Every stitch, every seam has a sound of its own. I hate to think of myself as someone who gets bored easily, someone who scratches the surface and feels like I have it all figured out—satisfied by the work I’ve completed in my head.”
“I know it’s not the monotony of repetition—after all, repetition is hardly monotonous. Even when what you’re doing stays the same, the air around you is changing moment by moment. Even if Holbein and Fez are materially identical stitches, that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. Every stitch, every seam has a sound of its own. I hate to think of myself as someone who gets bored easily, someone who scratches the surface and feels like I have it all figured out—satisfied by the work I’ve completed in my head.”
November 26, 2023
What about a book that can be read only when travelling?
This is how the book starts, which was fitting as I read it while traveling by train an I did really like it. It also caught my attention and immediately has me hooked! The story is slippery and weird and hard to catch but it was exactly the kind of weird I love most in books. Reading this book made me happy and I want to reread it soon! This is one of those rare books that make me feel like I see eye to eye with the words on every page; it‘s probably not for everyone but for some it will be a perfect fit. I can recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and is interested in the topics of translation and linguistics.
4.5 out of 5 stars. 0.5 stars detracted because I feel like the ending could have been a bit more satisfactory but I liked it nontheless.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing an ARC to me!
This is how the book starts, which was fitting as I read it while traveling by train an I did really like it. It also caught my attention and immediately has me hooked! The story is slippery and weird and hard to catch but it was exactly the kind of weird I love most in books. Reading this book made me happy and I want to reread it soon! This is one of those rare books that make me feel like I see eye to eye with the words on every page; it‘s probably not for everyone but for some it will be a perfect fit. I can recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and is interested in the topics of translation and linguistics.
4.5 out of 5 stars. 0.5 stars detracted because I feel like the ending could have been a bit more satisfactory but I liked it nontheless.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing an ARC to me!
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