
Discover the shortlist: David Boyd, ‘In translation, you have to inhabit the story’
David Boyd on his adoration for Japanese literature and how music became a common language when translating Heaven.
David Boyd is Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, in the USA.
He has translated novels and stories by Hiroko Oyamada, Masatsugu Ono and Toh EnJoe, among others. His translation of Hideo Furukawa’s Slow Boat (Pushkin Press, 2017) won the 2017/2018 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. With Sam Bett, he is co-translating the novels of Mieko Kawakami for Europa Editions.
Translated by Sam Bett David Boyd