Then Why Ask Me To Come? (KANATA 3)

“How times had changed. She’d even broken out the champagne flutes — plastic, but still — for our pre-meal drinks. In the afternoon light, the bubbles sparkled in a different way than they do after dark. They seemed more wholesome, more free.”

This story orbits a BBQ gathering taking place during a pandemic lockdown, to which our main protagonist has been reluctantly invited, along with his wife, by his wife’s best female confidante. Unbeknownst to him, he is about to be confronted over something he thought would remain a secret…

-----

KANATA, from かなた, translates as ‘far out’ or ‘beyond’, but also hints at a kind of nebulous liminality; we feel it holds in entertaining constellation something of the concerns of each of the stories selected as well as expressing something compelling about the act of reading and the art of translating literature from other languages and cultures.