Women In Translation: Byobu (ONLINE)

Please note the April bookclub meets *online*.

The Women In Translation reading group provides a free, friendly and gentle environment in which opinions are shared and new appreciations can be discovered. A place for curious minds and relaxed conversation hosted by poet and translator Annie Rutherford.

Our April meeting of Women In Translation will be discussing Byobu by Uruguayan poet, literary critic and essayist Ida Vitale, translated from Spanish by Sean Manning.

About the book:

Byobu is an intimate work filled with poetry and knowledge, densely interwoven without pretension, born of a single force: curiosity. As a book, it’s representative of the modesty and complexity of Vitale’s poetic universe. Byobu (from the Japanese word byōbu meaning literally a ‘wind wall’, i.e. a folding screen) is the protagonist in this treatise on the senses comprised of thirty-three contemplative episodes and a final section of aphoristic thoughts. Bybou is less a physical character, than a spiritual one, a consciousness revealing its rich inner world, which is, in fact, driven by its meticulous attention to our rich outer world. The insights afforded the readers certainly lead them to see Byobu as a folding screen behind which resides his universe of behaviours, worries, curiosities, pleasures, peculiarities, and efforts to understand.

Please note the April bookclub meets *online*.

Please support the bookshop & the book club by ordering your books through Lighthouse, use the code LONG-VICTORIOUS-WIT for bookclubbers 10% off.