Just as Winter in Sokcho revolved around the protagonist’s repressed French heritage, here it’s the underdeveloped Korean side to Claire’s identity that provides the impetus for the story. There’s another young(ish) woman with time on her hands, but this time it’s the sweltering Japanese summer providing the backdrop to the story.Ĭlaire is approaching thirty, and while she’s happy enough with her life, and with her partner, there’s a sense of something missing. The combination of writer and translator Abbas Higgins are now back with a follow-up, a book with a slightly different feel. Shua Dusapin shot to fame in the Anglosphere with the excellent Winter in Sokcho, a short, atmospheric novel set during a freezing winter on the Korean coast, which took out the 2021 National Book Award in Translation in the US. Mieko’s concerns about what awaits her in Europe mirrors Claire’s own concerns about the impending trip across the sea – if it ever comes off, that is. As the two become closer, Claire begins to reflect on her own mixed heritage, and that of her grandparents. After spotting a job ad on a university message board, she becomes the French-language tutor for Mieko, a young Japanese girl who will be travelling to Switzerland for study. However, she has other plans in the meantime.

You see, her grandparents were born in Korea, but haven’t been there since moving to Japan during the Korean war, and now Claire is going to accompany them on their homecoming journey. She’s there to spend some time with her nonagenarian grandparents, and at the end of the summer there’s an even bigger trip in store. Let’s head off to Tokyo, then, for this year’s final #WITMonth adventure 🙂Įlisa Shua Dusapin’s The Pachinko Parlour (translated by Anneesa Abbas Higgins, review copy courtesy of Scribe Publications) follows Swiss woman Claire on her summer holidays in a rather steamy Tokyo. There’s a hint of Switzerland, a promise of Korea and a whole lot of Japan involved in today’s choice, but what it boils down to is a woman spending a summer with relatives and some acquaintances – right across from a rather noisy business. This year’s Women in Translation Month reviews have thus far come in pairs, with trips to Japan, France, Sweden and Brazil, but there’s time for one last journey, and it’s hard to pin the destination down to just one location.

Elisa shua dusapin books