Yoko Tawada writes in both Japanese and German. She has received the Akutagawa Prize among other awards, and is the author of Memoirs of a Polar Bear, The Bridegroom was a Dog, Scattered all Over the Earth, The Naked Eye and The Last Children of Tokyo, which won the National Book Award under the title The Emissary. Susan Bernofsky is the prize-winning translator of works by Robert Walser, Jenny Erpenbeck, Franz Kafka and Herman Hesse. She is the author, most recently, of Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser.

Only the most profound reverence, I felt, could do justice to this writer and this work