The Great Passage
An award-winning story of love, friendship, and the power of human connection.
Kohei Araki believes that a dictionary is a boat to carry us across the sea of words. But after thirty-seven years of creating dictionaries, it's time for him to retire and find his replacement.
He discovers a kindred spirit in Mitsuya Majime--a young, disheveled square peg with a penchant for collecting antiquarian books and a background in linguistics--whom he swipes from his company's sales department.
Along with an energetic, if reluctant, new recruit and an elder linguistics scholar, Majime is tasked with a career-defining accomplishment: completing The Great Passage, a comprehensive 2,900-page tome of the Japanese language. On his journey, Majime discovers friendship, romance, and an incredible dedication to his work, inspired by the words that connect us all.
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Juliet Winters Carpenter attended the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo. Her first translated book, Kobo Abe's Mikkai (Secret Rendezvous), received the Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. In 2014, more than three decades later, Honkaku shosetsu (A True Novel), by Minae Mizumura, received the same award, as well as the Lewis Galantière Prize of the American Translators Association. Carpenter's other translations--more than fifty--include nearly every genre of fiction and nonfiction, as well as film subtitles and song lyrics. A professor at Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto, Carpenter has lived in Japan since 1975. She's licensed to teach the Japanese instruments koto and shamisen and sings alto in the Kyoto City Philharmonic Chorus. She and her husband divide their time between Kyoto and Whidbey Island, Washington.
An Earphones Award Winner, Fiction
"Mastery of words may not result in masterly communication, and a great dictionary, like a love story, is 'the result of people puzzling over their choices'--a classic tension that has made The Great Passage a prizewinner in Japan, as well as both a successful feature film and an animated television series." --The New York Times
"Swirling with witty enchantment, The Great Passage proves to be, well, utterly great. Readers should be advised to get ready to sigh with delighted satisfaction and awe-inspiring admiration." --Booklist (starred review)
"The Great Passage has a philosophy of thoughtfulness and dedication to words that any reader will understand...Miura's prose--and Carpenter's translation--glides along, smooth and precise, with flashes of quiet poetry." --Metropolis
