"Something about the way Tawada writes - and Bernofsky's beautiful translation stays true to this - allows the reader to take the most surreal and fantastical elements of the work completely seriously. Not that this is an earnest text, on the contrary it's deliciously whimsical and playful; but this doesn't detract from the importance of the messages it carries. If anything, it's proof that a different and unexpected perspective can be the most enlightening of all: it's through the eyes of polar bears that we see humanity most clearly."--Lucy Scholes "The National"
Memoirs of a Polar Bear works on many levels, fizzing with ideas on exile, migration and love... questioning what it means to be human.-- "The Spectator"
Memoirs gives us an often funny and intimate perspective on what it must be like to be a sentient bear in an overwhelmingly human world.--Clio Chang "New Republic"
[T]he animal characters of Memoirs pursue a hybrid existence, refusing to romanticize the state of nature.--Christine Smallwood "Harper's Magazine"
A distinguished contribution to the unique paranoid style of the new European novel.--Anis Shivani "The Brooklyn Rail"
A writer of scrupulous intensity.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
As acrobatic with her writing as her polar bear subjects, Yoko Tawada walks a line between fantastical yet believable.-- "World Literature Today"
For all the wonderful workings of plot and structure in Memoirs of the Polar Bear, what is truly affecting is Tawada's writing, which jumps off the page and practically sings.--Juan Vidal "NPR"
Her finest stories dramatize the fate of the individual in a mobilized world.--Benjamin Lytal "The New York Sun"
In 'Memoirs, ' when a polar bear walks into a bookstore or a grocery store, there are no troubles stemming from a lack of opposable thumbs. As with Kafka's animal characters, we are freed to dislike them in the special way we usually reserve only for ourselves.--Rivka Galchen "New York Times Magazine"
In this masterful performance of 'otherness, ' Tawada pushes us to feel the humming possibility between how things appear and what they could be.-- "Asymptote"
Ms Tawada brings her fine-nosed, soft-furred beasts to life... [Tawada] has a deadpan wit and disorienting mischief all her own, nimbly translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.-- "The Economist"
Strange, exquisite book.-- "The New Yorker"
Tawada asks us to see writing from an unusual perspective: it is like balancing on a ball, or hunting. Thus we're forced to see writing not just as a cerebral art but a physical one, as well.--Chad W. Post "Three Percent"
Tawada bears out the truth that tongues can also bring inventive thoughts to vibrant life.--Steven G. Kellman "The Boston Globe"
Tawada masterfully transports the reader to this place approaching transcendence, where language -- so distinctly human, we suppose -- brings us into imaginative intimacy with another kind of being.--Nathan Goldman "Full Stop"
Tawada's accounts of alienation achieve a remarkable potency.-- "The New York Times Book Review"
Tawada's stories agitate the mind like songs half remembered or treasure boxes whose keys are locked within.-- "The New York Times"
The empathy for these magnificent bears, from the cruelty foisted on them, of which they are unaware, to the love poured on them by those who care for them just drips off the page.-- "Press & Journal"
The novel's eldest bear describes writing as a ''''''''dangerous acrobatic stunt.'''''''' In Memoirs of a Polar Bear, Tawada executes this stunt with the effortless grace of a seasoned circus performer.--Thomas Michael Duncan "Words Without Borders"
This novel is ''doubly translated'' in the sense that Yoko Tawada first wrote it in Japanese and then translated it herself into German, from whence it was re-crafted into English. It even boasts an additional layer of translating, as it were, since the first part of the book is narrated by a Russian-speaking bear. The story itself follows three generations of polar bears across the world in a powerful tale of both family and isolation.--Lucas Iberico Lozada "Paste Magazine"
Yoko Tawada's whimsical ursine family saga expresses a powerful sense of justice.-- "The Irish Times"