The Writer’s Center welcomes Charlotte Goff and Ecre Karadag for a FREE virtual chat to celebrate International Translation Day. Charlotte and Ecre will discuss the joys and challenges of translating Fiction with Charlotte Goff’s translation of Nao-Cola Yamazaki’s Beautiful Distance.

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Charlotte Goff (trans. Beautiful Distance) is an Edinburgh-based literary translator. She was selected for the National Centre for Writing’s 2024 Emerging Translator Mentorship and mentored by Polly Barton.

Ecre Karadag is a literary translator working from Japanese. Her translations include Asako Yuzuki’s Mari the Unwonderful Witch (Penguin Random House Children’s UK), with further works forthcoming from Pushkin Press. Ecre holds an MA in Translation from SOAS, University of London, and an MA in Japanese Studies from Sophia University, Tokyo. While living in Tokyo, she was Head of Editorial and Rights at The COMM, a multilingual Japanese street-fashion magazine. She was mentored by Polly Barton through the National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translator Mentorship programme and subsequently selected as an NCW Virtual Translator in Residence.

About Beautiful Distance

“Beautifully, startingly, explosively expansive . . . In this delicate, near miraculous novel, there is no path away from grief, but there is a kind of company in loss, and a continuation of love.” —from the foreword by Katie Kitamura, author of Audition

From one of Japan’s most acclaimed writers comes a lyrical and poignant meditation on marriage, and the ways in which the most romantic gestures are often the quietest ones.

Before the hospital, we had often raised our hands towards one another as we’d gone through life together.

A man sits in a cafe, sipping a green juice and watching the world go by. A calico cat jumps onto a wall; a white butterfly flutters through the air; cherry blossom petals fall, softly, to the ground. Life, momentarily, stands still, as our unnamed narrator prepares to visit his terminally ill wife in hospital, and reminisces on the life they have shared together.

A prize-winning bestseller in Japan, Beautiful Distance is a profoundly affecting and intimate story that looks with honesty and tenderness at the journey towards the end of a life. It explores what family means, how we think about death, and the lasting power of small acts of love.

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