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3 Streets
The always astonishing Yoko Tawada here takes a walk on the supernatural side of the street. In “Kollwitzstrasse,” as the narrator muses on former East Berlin’s new bourgeois health food stores, so popular with the wealthy young people, a ghost boy begs her to buy him the old-fashioned sweets he craves. She worries that sugar’s still sugar—but why lecture him, since he’s already dead? Then white feathers fall from her head and she seems to be turning into a crane . . . Pure white kittens and a great Russian poet haunt “Majakowskiring”: the narrator who reveres Mayakovsky’s work is delighted to meet his ghost. And finally, in “Pushkin Allee,” a huge Soviet-era memorial of soldiers comes to life—and, “for a scene of carnage everything was awfully well-ordered.” Each of these stories glows, and opens up into new dimensions the work of this magisterial writer.
80 pages, Hardcover
First published August 16, 2022
21 people are currently reading
1001 people want to read
About the author
Yōko Tawada
125 books1,033 followersYōko Tawada (多和田葉子 Tawada Yōko, born March 23, 1960) is a Japanese writer currently living in Berlin, Germany. She writes in both Japanese and German.
Tawada was born in Tokyo, received her undergraduate education at Waseda University in 1982 with a major in Russian literature, then studied at Hamburg University where she received a master's degree in contemporary German literature. She received her doctorate in German literature at the University of Zurich. In 1987 she published Nur da wo du bist da ist nichts—Anata no iru tokoro dake nani mo nai (A Void Only Where You Are), a collection of poems in a German and Japanese bilingual edition.
Tawada's Missing Heels received the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1991, and The Bridegroom Was a Dog received the Akutagawa Prize in 1993. In 1999 she became writer-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four months. Her Suspect on the Night Train won the Tanizaki Prize and Ito Sei Literary Prize in 2003.
Tawada received the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1996, a German award to foreign writers in recognition of their contribution to German culture, and the Goethe Medal in 2005.
(from Wikipedia)
Tawada was born in Tokyo, received her undergraduate education at Waseda University in 1982 with a major in Russian literature, then studied at Hamburg University where she received a master's degree in contemporary German literature. She received her doctorate in German literature at the University of Zurich. In 1987 she published Nur da wo du bist da ist nichts—Anata no iru tokoro dake nani mo nai (A Void Only Where You Are), a collection of poems in a German and Japanese bilingual edition.
Tawada's Missing Heels received the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1991, and The Bridegroom Was a Dog received the Akutagawa Prize in 1993. In 1999 she became writer-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four months. Her Suspect on the Night Train won the Tanizaki Prize and Ito Sei Literary Prize in 2003.
Tawada received the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1996, a German award to foreign writers in recognition of their contribution to German culture, and the Goethe Medal in 2005.
(from Wikipedia)
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December 18, 2022
Ghosts in the Streets of Berlin
Review of the New Directions Storybook ND Hardcover (September 27, 2022) with 3 stories selected & translated by Margaret Mitsutani from the original Japanese language 百年の散歩（新潮文庫） (One Hundred Years of Walks*) (2017)
3 Streets consists of three short stories selected from Tawada's original Japanese book. It is possible that the selection was made by choosing those stories which had encounters with ghosts. I've only read one other book of Tawada's shorter fiction 容疑者の夜行列車 Yōgisha no yakō ressha (2002) [read in Estonian as Kahtlased kujud öises rongis (Suspicious Characters on a Night Train) (2020) as an English translation does not yet exist]. That latter book also had somewhat dreamlike encounters with characters, some of whom could well have been ghosts, so perhaps it is characteristic of Tawada's style.
I found 3 Streets to be a quick and easy read (it is only 80 pages) with very atmospheric descriptions of the locations, characters and ghosts that the protagonist encounters in their walks on “Kollwitzstrasse”, “Majakowskiring” and “Pushkin Allee." The streets are all real-life locations in East Berlin. The only crossover between the stories seemed to be that the protagonist had someone waiting for them back at home even while they continued to be distracted by the apparitions that they encountered.
Shakespeare and Company Staff Pick recommendation bookmark for Yoko Tawada's "3 Streets". Image sourced from Twitter.
I read 3 Streets through its inclusion in the 2022 Year of Reading subscription from the English language bookstore Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France.
* New Directions gave the original title as "A Century of Walks" but when I was reverse engineering in Google Translate in order to find the original Japanese edition I had to use "One Hundred Years of Walks" in order to find the correct book.
Trivia and Link
3 Streets is part of publisher New Directions Storybook ND series which is:
Review of the New Directions Storybook ND Hardcover (September 27, 2022) with 3 stories selected & translated by Margaret Mitsutani from the original Japanese language 百年の散歩（新潮文庫） (One Hundred Years of Walks*) (2017)
3 Streets consists of three short stories selected from Tawada's original Japanese book. It is possible that the selection was made by choosing those stories which had encounters with ghosts. I've only read one other book of Tawada's shorter fiction 容疑者の夜行列車 Yōgisha no yakō ressha (2002) [read in Estonian as Kahtlased kujud öises rongis (Suspicious Characters on a Night Train) (2020) as an English translation does not yet exist]. That latter book also had somewhat dreamlike encounters with characters, some of whom could well have been ghosts, so perhaps it is characteristic of Tawada's style.
I found 3 Streets to be a quick and easy read (it is only 80 pages) with very atmospheric descriptions of the locations, characters and ghosts that the protagonist encounters in their walks on “Kollwitzstrasse”, “Majakowskiring” and “Pushkin Allee." The streets are all real-life locations in East Berlin. The only crossover between the stories seemed to be that the protagonist had someone waiting for them back at home even while they continued to be distracted by the apparitions that they encountered.
Shakespeare and Company Staff Pick recommendation bookmark for Yoko Tawada's "3 Streets". Image sourced from Twitter.
I read 3 Streets through its inclusion in the 2022 Year of Reading subscription from the English language bookstore Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France.
* New Directions gave the original title as "A Century of Walks" but when I was reverse engineering in Google Translate in order to find the original Japanese edition I had to use "One Hundred Years of Walks" in order to find the correct book.
Trivia and Link
3 Streets is part of publisher New Directions Storybook ND series which is:
Created and curated by the writer and translator Gini Alhadeff, Storybook ND—our new series of slim hardcover fiction books—aims to deliver the pleasure one felt as a child reading a marvelous book from cover to cover in an afternoon. The series, beautifully designed by Peter Mendelsund, will feature original works by beloved New Directions authors, and will also introduce new writers to the list. As Alhadeff notes, “There’s nothing sweeter than to fall, for a few hours, between the covers of a perfect little book! And the image on the front, by a contemporary artist such as Francesco Clemente or Kiki Smith, will draw you in. Longer stories or shorter novels with a beautiful face: that’s Storybook ND.”
November 15, 2022
Ghosts don't come back to this world unless there's a special place for them here. Marx's spirit haunts Karl-Marx Strasse and Kant's appears in Kantstrasse. There are so many roads named after Goethe that his ghost gets awfully confused and rarely manages to haunt any of them. But Mayakowsky would undoubtedly come straight here. There was once a square named after him in Russia, but even spirits are avoiding Russia now. I've heard that if someone happens to read a dead poet's work as criticism of the current regime, his ghost is often arrested.
'3 Streets' is the 5th, for me, of the first 6 of the new New Directions Storybook collection, kindly sent to be by my Goodreads friend and fellow reader Wendy - see below for the details of the collection.
'3 Streets' is Margaret Mitsutani's translation of three Yōko Tawada stories selected from a longer-collection from 2017 , whose title would translate as 'A Century of Walks'.
Yōko Tawada is a fascinating writer. Born in Japan but resident for many years in Germany, she writes her novels in either German or Japanese, switching between languages for different books, particularly if she feels she is getting too comfortable writing in one. As she explained in 2008 interview, this loss of familiarity is key for her:
These novels continue that theme - written originally in Japanese but set in Berlin, with each story named after a street in the city, a street in turn named after a famous person, and the stories successfully combine a strong sense of place with an unsettling layer of unfamiliarity and the supernatural, and blend the personal and political.
'Kollwitzstrasse' has our narrator ostensibly on the way to meet a female companion for a dinner of venison, but finding herself heading in the wrong direction where she encounters a series of children. The last of these is a ghost from the last century (once treated by the father of Kathe Kollwitz, after whom the Strasse is named) hungry for food, who she encounters in a rather over-ethical, and certainly, over-priced food market:
"They're awfully expensive," I said. "Hang on a minute, there's some important information on the back of the box." To buy some time, I started to read. You want everything in your life to be 100% natural. But you still want the fish sticks you loved as a child, and you want your children to enjoy them too. These fish sticks are the creation of a young man who, with this very dream in his heart, rented a section of the Mekong Rivet; where for twenty years he organically raised Mekong giant catfish, which he fried in flour made from wheat grown with absolutely no fertilizers or chemical additives. Strangely enough, as I read I started to feel that these fish sticks were truly a work of art, so even at this price they might be worth it.
The narrator, in a rather surreal development, finds herself growing feathers and turning into a white crane (the significance of this and link to Kollwitz rather escaped me). And meanwhile the dinner appointment remains high on her agenda, but with little attempt to actually make it, and we never do learn of the relationship between the narrator and her putative dining companion, referred to only as 'she' - acquaintance, friend, lover, partner?
And when she emerges from the shop she finds herself in the scene echoing a famous poster by Kathe Kollwitz from the 1920s, and then later encounters the ghost of Kollwitz herself, who, movingly, transforms into her 1937-9 sculpture Pietà in front of the narrator's eyes.
'Majakowskiring' opens:
The German word Strasse can refer to various kinds of streets—some are straight, others twist and turn, and still others divide into two. Some are dead ends, while others are very long, and change their names many times along the way. Once in a while a street forms a circle, in which case it's not a Strasse, but a Ring. A Ring can also refer to an engagement ring. And Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" cycle is sometimes called the Ring for short—before you know it, a tiny ring has grown into a huge cycle. And the ring that symbolized the bond between two people is now large kenough to encompass the saga of an entire family.
After the wall around a castle down is destroyed, the modern street constructed where it once stood becomes a very large Ring. The Vienna Ringstrasse, for example, encircling the central part of the city, has lots of trolley stops on it. Majakowskiring, on the other hand, is to small you can walk all the way around it in about seven minutes.
The narrator is again wandering the streets of Berlin, this time hoping to have a chance encounter with her partner, the 'she' of the first story now a 'her':
The city is full of people who might have met, who might have become close friends ... that's why I make a point of referring to the person I've been with - sharing bed and bread - for twenty years as "her", and why I make arrangements for us to have one more chance of meeting in the labyrinth of the city, hoping to discover her again for the very first time.
Finding herself in Majakowskiring she first encounters the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's ghost, he in exile from Russia (see the opening quote) and then later thinking she sees her lover in a restaurants realises it is Osip Brik and his wife Lilya, with whom Mayakovsky had a open love affair, living with the Briks, and that the narrator is herself playing the part of the poet,
(L to R: Lilya Brik; Osip Brik, a Soviet Embassy official; and Mayakovsky in Paris in 1923)
As an aside, I understand senior officials, including Erich Honecker himself, lived in the Majakowskiring during the GDR era, although any connection to that in the story was not clear.
In the final story, 'Puschkinallee', the narrator has travelled to Treptower Park in the East of the City, a part of the city 'she' is reluctant to visit, and comes across the Sowjetisches Kriegerdenkmal in Treptower Park, where she interacts with those depicted on the memorial:
There is a particularly neat link to the statue of a mourning mother in the memorial, and Kollwitz's Pietà from the first story, which by its title may appear to be a statue of Mary and Jesus, following Michelangelo, but actually expresses Kollwitz's own grief at the loss of her younger son Peter in WW1.
Impressively complex for such a short work - recommended.
New Directions "Storybook ND" collection
Created and curated by the writer and translator Gini Alhadeff, Storybook ND—our new series of slim hardcover fiction books—aims to deliver the pleasure one felt as a child reading a marvelous book from cover to cover in an afternoon. The series, beautifully designed by Peter Mendelsund, will feature original works by beloved New Directions authors, and will also introduce new writers to the list. As Alhadeff notes, “There’s nothing sweeter than to fall, for a few hours, between the covers of a perfect little book! And the image on the front, by a contemporary artist such as Francesco Clemente or Kiki Smith, will draw you in. Longer stories or shorter novels with a beautiful face: that’s Storybook ND.
The full collection is:
The English Understand Wool
Spadework for a Palace
Early Light
The Woman Who Killed the Fish
3 Streets
The Famous Magician
'3 Streets' is the 5th, for me, of the first 6 of the new New Directions Storybook collection, kindly sent to be by my Goodreads friend and fellow reader Wendy - see below for the details of the collection.
'3 Streets' is Margaret Mitsutani's translation of three Yōko Tawada stories selected from a longer-collection from 2017 , whose title would translate as 'A Century of Walks'.
Yōko Tawada is a fascinating writer. Born in Japan but resident for many years in Germany, she writes her novels in either German or Japanese, switching between languages for different books, particularly if she feels she is getting too comfortable writing in one. As she explained in 2008 interview, this loss of familiarity is key for her:
It is useful, I believe, to fundamentally lose one sense of direction at least once. To break with the familiarity and routine of the culture and the institution of the society in which you grew up. Thus one is at least partially reborn somewhere else and this gives you a double advantage: you can observe the patterns of new institutions in a foreign world with the critical consciousness of an adult and selectively appropriate them like an actor does.
These novels continue that theme - written originally in Japanese but set in Berlin, with each story named after a street in the city, a street in turn named after a famous person, and the stories successfully combine a strong sense of place with an unsettling layer of unfamiliarity and the supernatural, and blend the personal and political.
'Kollwitzstrasse' has our narrator ostensibly on the way to meet a female companion for a dinner of venison, but finding herself heading in the wrong direction where she encounters a series of children. The last of these is a ghost from the last century (once treated by the father of Kathe Kollwitz, after whom the Strasse is named) hungry for food, who she encounters in a rather over-ethical, and certainly, over-priced food market:
"They're awfully expensive," I said. "Hang on a minute, there's some important information on the back of the box." To buy some time, I started to read. You want everything in your life to be 100% natural. But you still want the fish sticks you loved as a child, and you want your children to enjoy them too. These fish sticks are the creation of a young man who, with this very dream in his heart, rented a section of the Mekong Rivet; where for twenty years he organically raised Mekong giant catfish, which he fried in flour made from wheat grown with absolutely no fertilizers or chemical additives. Strangely enough, as I read I started to feel that these fish sticks were truly a work of art, so even at this price they might be worth it.
The narrator, in a rather surreal development, finds herself growing feathers and turning into a white crane (the significance of this and link to Kollwitz rather escaped me). And meanwhile the dinner appointment remains high on her agenda, but with little attempt to actually make it, and we never do learn of the relationship between the narrator and her putative dining companion, referred to only as 'she' - acquaintance, friend, lover, partner?
And when she emerges from the shop she finds herself in the scene echoing a famous poster by Kathe Kollwitz from the 1920s, and then later encounters the ghost of Kollwitz herself, who, movingly, transforms into her 1937-9 sculpture Pietà in front of the narrator's eyes.
'Majakowskiring' opens:
The German word Strasse can refer to various kinds of streets—some are straight, others twist and turn, and still others divide into two. Some are dead ends, while others are very long, and change their names many times along the way. Once in a while a street forms a circle, in which case it's not a Strasse, but a Ring. A Ring can also refer to an engagement ring. And Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" cycle is sometimes called the Ring for short—before you know it, a tiny ring has grown into a huge cycle. And the ring that symbolized the bond between two people is now large kenough to encompass the saga of an entire family.
After the wall around a castle down is destroyed, the modern street constructed where it once stood becomes a very large Ring. The Vienna Ringstrasse, for example, encircling the central part of the city, has lots of trolley stops on it. Majakowskiring, on the other hand, is to small you can walk all the way around it in about seven minutes.
The narrator is again wandering the streets of Berlin, this time hoping to have a chance encounter with her partner, the 'she' of the first story now a 'her':
The city is full of people who might have met, who might have become close friends ... that's why I make a point of referring to the person I've been with - sharing bed and bread - for twenty years as "her", and why I make arrangements for us to have one more chance of meeting in the labyrinth of the city, hoping to discover her again for the very first time.
Finding herself in Majakowskiring she first encounters the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky's ghost, he in exile from Russia (see the opening quote) and then later thinking she sees her lover in a restaurants realises it is Osip Brik and his wife Lilya, with whom Mayakovsky had a open love affair, living with the Briks, and that the narrator is herself playing the part of the poet,
(L to R: Lilya Brik; Osip Brik, a Soviet Embassy official; and Mayakovsky in Paris in 1923)
As an aside, I understand senior officials, including Erich Honecker himself, lived in the Majakowskiring during the GDR era, although any connection to that in the story was not clear.
In the final story, 'Puschkinallee', the narrator has travelled to Treptower Park in the East of the City, a part of the city 'she' is reluctant to visit, and comes across the Sowjetisches Kriegerdenkmal in Treptower Park, where she interacts with those depicted on the memorial:
There is a particularly neat link to the statue of a mourning mother in the memorial, and Kollwitz's Pietà from the first story, which by its title may appear to be a statue of Mary and Jesus, following Michelangelo, but actually expresses Kollwitz's own grief at the loss of her younger son Peter in WW1.
Impressively complex for such a short work - recommended.
New Directions "Storybook ND" collection
Created and curated by the writer and translator Gini Alhadeff, Storybook ND—our new series of slim hardcover fiction books—aims to deliver the pleasure one felt as a child reading a marvelous book from cover to cover in an afternoon. The series, beautifully designed by Peter Mendelsund, will feature original works by beloved New Directions authors, and will also introduce new writers to the list. As Alhadeff notes, “There’s nothing sweeter than to fall, for a few hours, between the covers of a perfect little book! And the image on the front, by a contemporary artist such as Francesco Clemente or Kiki Smith, will draw you in. Longer stories or shorter novels with a beautiful face: that’s Storybook ND.
The full collection is:
The English Understand Wool
Spadework for a Palace
Early Light
The Woman Who Killed the Fish
3 Streets
The Famous Magician
July 12, 2023
A Trip Where Past and Present Meet
After finishing Yoko Tawada’s
Scattered All Over the Earth, I decided to stick with the author and “travel” with her from Denmark to Germany. Tawada’s Three Streets are three short stories. I enjoyed them all for different reasons.
KOLLWITZ-STRASSE is the first street/story in this collection. It is a very surreal and almost stream of consciousness narration chronicling the narrator experiences on Kollwitz Strasse. We encounter the street’s namesake and her story is heartbreaking.
The narrative is filled with observations, social commentary, and juxtapositions, making East Berlin the perfect setting. Walking down Kollwitz Strasse is like falling into Alice’s rabbit hole or an episode of Sterling’s Twilight Zone. Robot boy. Real boy. Ghost boy. Grocery shopping in a store that is like a weigh station where past and present interact and intersect different dimensions of reality.
This quote sums up the reading experience. “Perhaps there are seams between the present and the future, with tiny holes in them through which people go back and forth.”
MAJAKOW-SKIRING is an incredible work of imagination. It was a very surreal reading experience. As the narrator described the images and encounters conjured up in the imagination, my own mind made connections and it’s own conjurings. I absolutely loved it. It reminded me of reading Murakami or watching Spirited Away.
The author contemplates rings, fate, chance encounters, choosing different paths, and the thin veil of time. What happens if you wander off the path, is it possible to slip into the past? Or any possible arrays of the future? The author brings words and ideas together and at the same time lets them drift apart.
Just when you think the trip is at its trippiest, the poet playwright Mayakovsky appears, and his life and love triangle are woven into the narrative. There is so much to contemplate in this short story! If you like stories where the lines of reality and fantasy blur, this one is for you!
PUSCHKINALLEE is a story about perspective and contemplation about war. It has the beautiful setting of a tree-lined avenue in Germany that looks like it could be an oil painting. The author explores the power of stone and memory. The narrative unfurls over a summer day. It is beautifully written with detailed descriptions. I loved this collection and finishing it in my summer vacation made it even more memorable.
After finishing Yoko Tawada’s
Scattered All Over the Earth, I decided to stick with the author and “travel” with her from Denmark to Germany. Tawada’s Three Streets are three short stories. I enjoyed them all for different reasons.
KOLLWITZ-STRASSE is the first street/story in this collection. It is a very surreal and almost stream of consciousness narration chronicling the narrator experiences on Kollwitz Strasse. We encounter the street’s namesake and her story is heartbreaking.
The narrative is filled with observations, social commentary, and juxtapositions, making East Berlin the perfect setting. Walking down Kollwitz Strasse is like falling into Alice’s rabbit hole or an episode of Sterling’s Twilight Zone. Robot boy. Real boy. Ghost boy. Grocery shopping in a store that is like a weigh station where past and present interact and intersect different dimensions of reality.
This quote sums up the reading experience. “Perhaps there are seams between the present and the future, with tiny holes in them through which people go back and forth.”
MAJAKOW-SKIRING is an incredible work of imagination. It was a very surreal reading experience. As the narrator described the images and encounters conjured up in the imagination, my own mind made connections and it’s own conjurings. I absolutely loved it. It reminded me of reading Murakami or watching Spirited Away.
The author contemplates rings, fate, chance encounters, choosing different paths, and the thin veil of time. What happens if you wander off the path, is it possible to slip into the past? Or any possible arrays of the future? The author brings words and ideas together and at the same time lets them drift apart.
Just when you think the trip is at its trippiest, the poet playwright Mayakovsky appears, and his life and love triangle are woven into the narrative. There is so much to contemplate in this short story! If you like stories where the lines of reality and fantasy blur, this one is for you!
PUSCHKINALLEE is a story about perspective and contemplation about war. It has the beautiful setting of a tree-lined avenue in Germany that looks like it could be an oil painting. The author explores the power of stone and memory. The narrative unfurls over a summer day. It is beautifully written with detailed descriptions. I loved this collection and finishing it in my summer vacation made it even more memorable.
October 14, 2022
This is only my second of Tawada’s books, the other being Scattered All Over the Earth. I have appreciated both, and though I know she is praised much in the media, I still will reserve my own judgement.
Though she writes in Japanese she lives in Berlin, where this collection of three fairly long short stories is set.
These are three ghost stories each named on a street in Berlin. These are not the sort of hauntings one would expect with a more usual ghost story, but rather the supernatural hidden along the road, in the statues and buildings, and in the language used by their residents.
It’s cleverly done, but at times a bit smart for its own good. It’s the sort of experimental fiction that earns a degree of admiration whilst being largely unexciting.
Though she writes in Japanese she lives in Berlin, where this collection of three fairly long short stories is set.
These are three ghost stories each named on a street in Berlin. These are not the sort of hauntings one would expect with a more usual ghost story, but rather the supernatural hidden along the road, in the statues and buildings, and in the language used by their residents.
It’s cleverly done, but at times a bit smart for its own good. It’s the sort of experimental fiction that earns a degree of admiration whilst being largely unexciting.
January 2, 2023
Siin raamatus on seda Tawada stiili, mis mulle nii väga meeldib – tegevus liigub tavalisest jalutuskäigust ajaloolisele ja/või kummalisele rännakule ja tagasi kergusega, mis teevad täiesti loomulikuks kord vestlused Majakovskiga ja seejärel ise temaks kehastumise või kummituslapsega kauplemise kommileti ees. Tawada mängib lõpuni need olukorrad, millega vahest me kõik (? mina küll) ennast lõbustame, kui näiteks bussi oodates inimestele elulugusid mõtleme ja situatsioone peas keerutame, et need unustada kohe, kui sõiduk saabub.
Kolm lugu, mis on avatud kolme Berliini asukoha kaudu, on osa pikemast jutukogust (ilmunud jaapani keeles). Miks need lood? Miks ainult kolm? Tahaks veel…
Kolm lugu, mis on avatud kolme Berliini asukoha kaudu, on osa pikemast jutukogust (ilmunud jaapani keeles). Miks need lood? Miks ainult kolm? Tahaks veel…
January 23, 2023
A good one to grasp the author's writing style. But kind of meh and random too.
September 17, 2023
The city is an amusement park of the senses, a rehearsal for a revolution, a restaurant serving up loneliness, a workshop for words.
August 4, 2024
Reading Tawada I often feel like she would reach the ending of Evangelion and go "YES. Makes TOTAL sense. That was exactly how I expected it to end!"
April 6, 2023
A bit to meandering and filled with musings for my taste. I think the closest thing is "stream of consciousness" but I was able to make sense of it so i hesitate to us it. The story dealt much more with the supernatural than I was expecting and didn't really enjoy. I will say reading this made me wonder why I so highly rated the last Yoko Tawada book I read. But that was about 5 years ago so my taste has changed.
May 27, 2022
Not sure if the story is underdeveloped or if it's a translation issue, but this one was underwhelming, confusing, and a bit nonsensical-- not in the typical odd way of speculative fiction I enjoy.
December 4, 2022
Yoko Tawada is one of my favorite writers, but this volume was three swings and three misses.
February 26, 2023
I thought the first story, Kollwitzstrasse was exceptional, a 4 or 5, but the next two were a bit to muddled to enjoy. Still, here is an amazing imagination!
July 30, 2025
enjoyable prose and writing style. it just felt like i was reading someone's diary written while roaming around berlin, or entering someone's mind while in a dream state. it was atmospheric and disorienting! i liked and emotionally connected to majakowskiring the most and i got quite intrigued with the person behind the name of the ring! kollwitzstrasse was also nice, but the last story, puschkin allee, was a bit random imo.
i like this part – "ghosts apparently don’t come back to this world unless there’s a special place for them here. marx’s spirit haunts karl-marx-strasse, and kant’s appears in kantstrasse. there are so many streets named after goethe that his ghost gets awfully confused and rarely manages to haunt any of them."
i like this part – "ghosts apparently don’t come back to this world unless there’s a special place for them here. marx’s spirit haunts karl-marx-strasse, and kant’s appears in kantstrasse. there are so many streets named after goethe that his ghost gets awfully confused and rarely manages to haunt any of them."
May 27, 2024
I just spent hours reading about someone’s dream.
The prose was good though but still, no.
The prose was good though but still, no.
June 5, 2025
Majakowskiring might have left the deepest impression on me of anything I've read this year as a complete work
June 3, 2023
Three streets, three ghosts, or perhaps just one ghost among many others:
The city is just like the inside of my brain: the words on shop signs create endless waves of associations—the chattering of passersby grows into an opera, travelers scatter foreign words on museum floors, wars carved in stone send out continuous warnings, drunks in the subway make campaign speeches, and in coffee shops, the people at the next table are always putting on a play with an indecipherable plot, as teas and cakes with tea-and-cake-like names go into mouths and down gullets to be digested in stomachs, while money moves from wallets to checkout counters, from companies to banks, and, without learning to add, people keep getting older, as year after year is added to their ages.
The city is an amusement park of the senses, a rehearsal for a revolution, a restaurant serving up loneliness, a workshop for words. Surrounded by city scenes that look like the future, you believe you'll soon be able to grasp the future itself. This is especially true when you're intensely, violently waiting for someone, because there's the fact that even if you meet the awaited person at the appointed time, you will still have the days after that to endure, and that never occurs to you, that you still have all this time to live through, slowly, stoically, moment after moment.
November 4, 2025
Three Streets is a quick read, all of 80 pages, which takes us on a series of dreamlike walks through a Berlin that may only exist in Tawada's mind. It is part modern Unified Berlin, part Soviet East Berlin, part War-Torn Berlin and part Japan. Even part Medieval Berlin. The unnamed narrator drifts through these memories -- real or imagined -- on their way to a date they should keep, or know won't be kept or never happened, or wasn't even theirs in the first place.
The first of the three stories felt slightly amiss to me, almost like reading someone's very strange, indecipherable dream journal. I couldn't find the key in the text to unlock it. It warmed up for me in the second, especially the scenes where the unnamed narrator (are they the same person? Who knows?) interacts with, and later inhabits the persona of the Russian poet Mayakovsky, was brilliant fun, but it was the third story, "Puschkinallee," that was the clear standout of the collection. Tawada reckons with traumas both personal and institutional of her upbringing in post-war Japan and East Berlin, and does so in way both direct-yet-indirect that shows a master's command of craft.
The first of the three stories felt slightly amiss to me, almost like reading someone's very strange, indecipherable dream journal. I couldn't find the key in the text to unlock it. It warmed up for me in the second, especially the scenes where the unnamed narrator (are they the same person? Who knows?) interacts with, and later inhabits the persona of the Russian poet Mayakovsky, was brilliant fun, but it was the third story, "Puschkinallee," that was the clear standout of the collection. Tawada reckons with traumas both personal and institutional of her upbringing in post-war Japan and East Berlin, and does so in way both direct-yet-indirect that shows a master's command of craft.
December 22, 2023
Another entry in the ND Storybook series (alongside "The English Understand Wool," which I read earlier this fall)...it took me a full story to "get" the book and I had to lap back around upon completion and reread the first entry, though in a way this was almost thematically correct, as the ending of the third story reaches back around into the first story, referencing a stone monument to a war mother.
Three pieces of surrealist, interior narrative of a woman wandering the streets in Berlin, maybe on the way to have dinner with her girlfriend, free-associating and being haunted by ghosts (or those free-associated thoughts inspired by her surroundings and pieces of art and architecture). The notes on the back cover liken the work to Gogol, which was a good way to frame the stories, though Tawada's work reads as purely interior, rather than purely exterior like Gogol's. Befuddling, whimsical, pleasingly centered in a highly specific place.
Three pieces of surrealist, interior narrative of a woman wandering the streets in Berlin, maybe on the way to have dinner with her girlfriend, free-associating and being haunted by ghosts (or those free-associated thoughts inspired by her surroundings and pieces of art and architecture). The notes on the back cover liken the work to Gogol, which was a good way to frame the stories, though Tawada's work reads as purely interior, rather than purely exterior like Gogol's. Befuddling, whimsical, pleasingly centered in a highly specific place.
Read
July 9, 2025I just finished Street and I’m still not sure what exactly happened—but somehow, I don’t mind.
Yoko Tawada writes like someone translating a dream into language. The story moves gently, like mist turning corners, and there were passages that made me stop just to reread a sentence out loud. Her language is strange in a beautiful way—slippery, poetic, sometimes surreal.
That said, it’s not the easiest read. The plot (if there is one) isn’t really the point. Characters appear like symbols, and meanings feel hidden under layers of fog. I sometimes felt a little lost, but maybe that’s part of the experience—wandering without needing to arrive.
This book isn’t for everyone. But if you like quiet stories that bend reality, that ask more questions than they answer, and that linger in your mind like a half-remembered dream… then Street might find you in the right mood.
Yoko Tawada writes like someone translating a dream into language. The story moves gently, like mist turning corners, and there were passages that made me stop just to reread a sentence out loud. Her language is strange in a beautiful way—slippery, poetic, sometimes surreal.
That said, it’s not the easiest read. The plot (if there is one) isn’t really the point. Characters appear like symbols, and meanings feel hidden under layers of fog. I sometimes felt a little lost, but maybe that’s part of the experience—wandering without needing to arrive.
This book isn’t for everyone. But if you like quiet stories that bend reality, that ask more questions than they answer, and that linger in your mind like a half-remembered dream… then Street might find you in the right mood.
November 19, 2022
The smell of dry grass, steaming in the hot sun, and the buzzing of bees like tiny stitches, sewing everything up. The earth is sweet, and every time the breeze goes by its fingers play in my hair and gently stroke my cheeks. What season is caressing my skin? It feels good. Who would have known that parting could be this pleasant, as fine as spring?
notes: i found the second story mesmerizing and moving, but the first and third were sterile somehow, like a piece of art set behind glass that i can admire but not quite fathom.
notes: i found the second story mesmerizing and moving, but the first and third were sterile somehow, like a piece of art set behind glass that i can admire but not quite fathom.
June 18, 2025
This is my second Yoko Tawada book, having just finished and enjoyed Scattered All Over the Earth. I read 3 Streets in wonder - the narrator encounters ghosts living in plain sight, time seems fluid and even the narrator seems to take on different personas or qualities.
Following the narrator's stream of consciousness is a little bewildering, to say the least. I try to make sense of the stories and observe recurring themes of separation, loss and post-war trauma but inside, I keep thinking: what am I reading?
Following the narrator's stream of consciousness is a little bewildering, to say the least. I try to make sense of the stories and observe recurring themes of separation, loss and post-war trauma but inside, I keep thinking: what am I reading?
February 3, 2023
After just finishing a book by Marquez, the magical realism in 3 Streets was disappointing and random. I get that the author was trying to be intellectual but to what end?
I really like the concept of the ND publications but this particular book was not my favorite. It's weird, because I usually love reading short books translated from Japanese authors where I have no idea what's going on - go figure.
I really like the concept of the ND publications but this particular book was not my favorite. It's weird, because I usually love reading short books translated from Japanese authors where I have no idea what's going on - go figure.
February 11, 2023
Each of the streets in Tawada's collection is named after an artist: German Expressionist Käthe Kollwitz, Russian Futurist Mayakovsky & Pushkin. I love the way Tawada's stories unfold, digressions filled with the unexpected & surprising with smart commentary on social & political issues. The back cover calls 3 Streets ghost stories, but as Rivka Galchen notes, they are "magnificently strange." The first Storybook ND I've read & it was a delight.
February 15, 2023
This is my first Yoko Tawada read. Three short ghost stories are presented in this Storybook ND collection. Each story in this novel is named after streets in Berlin and set in this popular German city.
Kollwitzstrasse, Majakowskiring, and Pushkin Allee are all unique stories. While they are billed as supernatural ghost stories, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were reading from the perspective of a ghost. I guess it’s up to interpretation.
Kollwitzstrasse, Majakowskiring, and Pushkin Allee are all unique stories. While they are billed as supernatural ghost stories, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were reading from the perspective of a ghost. I guess it’s up to interpretation.
October 4, 2023
Kollwitzstausse - 3.5
The best of the three. Also the most cohesive and engaging.
Majakowskiring - 1
Almost too nonsensical to be read as it has been translated. A good example of the surreal crossing the line into absurdity.
Puschkinallee -2.5
A nice concept with the living war memorial, but again didn’t seem to have a discernible story. Lacking in both continuity and character development.
The best of the three. Also the most cohesive and engaging.
Majakowskiring - 1
Almost too nonsensical to be read as it has been translated. A good example of the surreal crossing the line into absurdity.
Puschkinallee -2.5
A nice concept with the living war memorial, but again didn’t seem to have a discernible story. Lacking in both continuity and character development.
February 12, 2023
Shakespeare and Company Year of Reading - February pick
The pros - a short read; some beautiful phrases; interesting ideas
The cons - extremely weird
Because of the aforementioned extreme weirdness, I just couldn't get into this one. I did think each story improved on a reread. They might have had more of an impact if I'd spent a decent amount of time in Berlin? IDK. YMMV.
The pros - a short read; some beautiful phrases; interesting ideas
The cons - extremely weird
Because of the aforementioned extreme weirdness, I just couldn't get into this one. I did think each story improved on a reread. They might have had more of an impact if I'd spent a decent amount of time in Berlin? IDK. YMMV.
February 26, 2023
I had a very hard time following this book. I was hoping to enjoy & appreciate each short story, but found myself reading pages multiple times trying to make sense of what the author wanted the reader to imagine or understand. Because of this, I would often get bored & put the book down for later when this should have been a quick afternoon read.
March 24, 2023
"I'VE BEEN WAITING ALL THIS TIME BUT YOU DIDN'T COME. THE CITY AND I ARE NOW ONE, BODY AND SOUL. I WILL NOT BE COMING HOME. GOODBYE, GOODBYE."
"the smell of dry grass, steaming in the hot sun, and the buzzing of bees like tiny stitches, sewing everything up. the earth is sweet, and every time the breeze goes by its fingers play in my hair..."
"the smell of dry grass, steaming in the hot sun, and the buzzing of bees like tiny stitches, sewing everything up. the earth is sweet, and every time the breeze goes by its fingers play in my hair..."
April 28, 2023
It’s like surreal poetry in prose.
I liked bits of it but not really the whole. Some parts and phrases were very evocative. But in entirety, it’s not a gripping read. It is a collection best read slowly while contemplating our own experiences.
This to me was 3/5 but I can see how it can be 5/5 for others.
It’s a personal thing.
August 4, 2023
Not the easiest of styles to read, but so worth it. Three different stories and three different streets of Berlin and the ghosts that reside in them. All of them are smart and worth it. I feel the stories got better as the little book went on. The last story was about experiencing a stone war memorial coming to life and it just worked. Nice read
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