Akira Otani¡¯s ¡°The Night of Baba Yaga,¡± translated into English by Sam Bett, received the prestigious Crime Writers¡¯ Association Dagger Award for crime fiction in translation in London on July 3. It¡¯s the first time a Japanese writer has won the translation award since it was established in 2006.
The genre-bending novel takes place in Japan¡¯s 1970s yakuza underworld and centers on two women, Yoriko Shindo, a ruthless martial arts fighter, and ¡°the princess¡± Shoko, daughter of a mob boss, for whom Yoriko serves as a bodyguard.
¡°In form and style and content, ¡®The Night of Baba Yaga¡¯ is unlike any book I¡¯ve translated, but it¡¯s also eerily familiar, like a myth you overheard before you learned to talk,¡± Bett tells The Japan Times.
Contributor Kris Kosaka writes in her review, ¡°(The novel) radiates with both cinematic grandeur and a subtle, constant railing against normalization of any kind, the latter of which can be seen in another aspect of queerness that permeates the novel: its framing of what it means to be the ¡®other¡¯ in society.¡±
¡°The Night of Baba Yaga¡± was a commercial success in Japan and was shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 2021. It¡¯s Otani¡¯s first novel to be translated into English, by Soho Press in the U.S. and Faber and Faber in the U.K.
Translating the novel was not a safe, obvious venture from the start. ¡°¡®The Night of Baba Yaga¡¯ has no obvious comparison title among what¡¯s been published from Japan,¡± Bett says. ¡°It¡¯s more like a 1970s exploitation film than any book that comes to mind. It¡¯s built differently, somehow both borrowing from action cinema and playing entirely by its own rules.
¡°After today, those of us working in publishing should all feel more encouraged to take risks on the books that we believe in.¡±
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