THE PINE ISLANDS

A German scholar travels through Japan with a suicidal young companion in this cerebral meditation on death and poetry, German novelist Poschmann's first book to be translated into English.

Gilbert Silvester, a professor and pompous, self-assured scholar of beard fashions in film, wakes from a dream that his wife cheated on him and takes it as a sign that he should flee to Japan. “He didn’t know a great deal about Japan—it wasn’t exactly the land of his dreams,” yet Gilbert feels pulled toward the country’s asceticism and away from his own attachments. Early in his journey, he meets a young man at a train station: He observes that like him, the young man, Yosa, gives “endless effort, but this effort [is] not recognized.” Gilbert sees himself reflected in Yosa even though Gilbert is on a journey to enrich his life, and Yosa—who intended to jump in front of a train—is on a journey to end his. Gilbert becomes enamored with the writings of Matsuo Bashō, innovator of the haiku. Yosa carries a suicide handbook. Together, the men use their texts as guidebooks to wander Japan: Yosa, to find the perfect place to end his life, and Gilbert, to find enlightenment. Mirrors, leaves, and trees are recurring motifs in this beautifully written novel, yet the story wanders in awe and distraction, suggesting that poetry, travel, and companionship are all worth undertaking for the experience of exploration. “Learning to die,” Gilbert muses. “The journey that serves to distance oneself from everything, in order to get closer to something, was nothing more than a contemplation of the space that resulted from the journey itself.” Both men are undertaking a journey of self-fulfillment that involves abandoning everything.

An introspective, meandering novel of transcendence.