Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel

Tawada, whose novel The Emissary won the National Book Award for Translated Literature, delivers a poignant ode to artistic inspiration. Patrik, whom Tawada obliquely refers to as “the patient,” is a literary researcher in Berlin whose love of art and objects often precludes his love for other people (“Even as a child, he called his toy tractor ‘my colleague’ and addressed his teddy bear as ‘Professor’ ”). After the Covid-19 lockdown lifts, Patrik receives an invitation to speak at a conference on his hero, the poet Paul Celan, but he feels too overwhelmed to attend. At a café, he meets a mysterious man named Leo-Eric Fu, who knows his work and encourages him to reconsider. The men’s lively conversations give the novel its charge as they discuss their shared love of Celan’s ever-surprising word choices and experience the ease and thrill of a new connection, which opens Patrik’s world in surprising ways (“A new friendship is my new form of long-distance travel. The airline is called Leo-Eric Fu and can fly much faster than any Lufthansa stork or the Indonesian divinity Garuda”). Readers will fall in love with this inventive and deeply human story. (July)