TED GOOSSEN teaches Japanese literature and film at York University in Toronto. He is the editor of The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories. He translated Haruki Murakami's Wind/Pinball and The Strange Library, and co-translated (with Philip Gabriel) Men Without Women and Killing Commendatore. His translations of Hiromi Kawakami's People from My Neighbourhood (Granta Books) and Naoya Shiga's Reconciliation (Canongate) were published in 2020. .
Novelists Haruki Murakami and Mieko Kawakami make plans to meet in a cave, trade stories, and roast rats over a campfire. A few pages later, director Hirokazu Koreeda revisits a favorite story by Naoya Shiga, about a barber whose murderous outburst reminds him of Raymond Carver's writing and inspired his own cinematic ideas. Yoko Ogawa narrates a haunting sequence of illustrations by Canadian artist Jon Klassen. Aoko Matsuda shows us how to physically dissect a misogynist. And that's before you get to a Noh play, haiku and tanka poems, and the sketches, photographs, and manga of a themed section on the allure of food. --Roland Kelts, Nikkei Asia An astonishment, by turns playful and profound, that makes you wish it were monthly. --Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao MONKEY is full of deep, funny, wild, scary, fabulous, moving, surprising, brilliant work. --Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome