The Pachinko Parlour
Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins
Overview
From the author of Winter in Sokcho, which won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
The days are beginning to draw in. The sky is dark by seven in the evening. I lie on the floor and gaze out of the window. Women’s calves, men’s shoes, heels trodden down by the weight of bodies borne for too long.
It is summer in Tokyo. Claire finds herself dividing her time between tutoring twelve-year-old Mieko in an apartment in an abandoned hotel and lying on the floor at her grandparents: daydreaming, playing Tetris, and listening to the sounds from the street above. The heat rises; the days slip by.
The plan is for Claire to visit Korea with her grandparents. They fled the civil war there over fifty years ago, along with thousands of others, and haven’t been back since. When they first arrived in Japan, they opened Shiny, a pachinko parlour. Shiny is still open, drawing people in with its bright, flashing lights and promises of good fortune. And as Mieko and Claire gradually bond, their tender relationship growing, Mieko’s determination to visit the pachinko parlour builds.
The Pachinko Parlour is a nuanced and beguiling exploration of identity and otherness, unspoken histories, and the loneliness you can feel within a family. Crisp and enigmatic, Shua Dusapin’s writing glows with intelligence.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Other rights
- Paperback
- 210mm x 135mm
- 176 pages
- 9781922585172
- AUD$24.99
- 30 August 2022
- ANZ
- Daunt Books
Categories
Awards
- Longlisted for the 2022 The National Book Critics Circle Awards for Barrios Books in Translation Prize
Praise
‘Dusapin explores the blurrier borders of language … the novel is a slow, meditative portrait of one woman finding herself, as well as a moving reflection on language’s capacity to divide us from others — and ourselves … while Dusapin’s prose is spare, it is not minimal at all. Her descriptions are lovely and moody, often bouncing obliquely off Claire’s inner state … Of course, much of the pleasure of reading … in English comes from Higgins’s delicate translation. It’s a formidable challenge to translate a novel that deals so centrally with language, and Higgins manages to call the reader’s attention to both the beauty of the writing and the linguistic and cultural switching that demands so much of Claire’s energy.’
‘A book full of delicacy and melancholy … sprinkled with meticulous touches.’
About the Author
Elisa Shua Dusapin was born in France in 1992 and raised in Paris, Seoul, and Switzerland. Her first novel, Winter in Sokcho, was published in 2016 to wide acclaim and was awarded the Prix Robert Walser, the Prix Régine Desforges, and, after its translation into English, the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
Translator
Aneesa Abbas Higgins has translated books by Elisa Shua Dusapin, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Ali Zamir, and Nina Bouraoui. Seven Stones by Vénus Khoury-Ghata was shortlisted for the Scott-Moncrieff Translation Prize, and both A Girl Called Eel by Ali Zamir and What Became of the White Savage by François Garde won PEN Translates awards.
