An interesting novel that's very experimental, meta-fictional, and phenomenological. It's reminiscent of Murakami, Borges, and Nabokov. The plot is hard to explain, but it's partly about a writer who writes for very specific moments, books for traveling, books for being underneath a dog. It's also about the strangeness of living and how we try to put that into words. I enjoyed this short novella.

A wonderful and Borgesian novel about an elusive writer who travels the world writing a book in any and every language. This was a surreal and whimsical dream of a novel which celebrates the delight of writing, translation and creation. The section that discusses how contradictory language might make sense in a non textual or non English format was so enlightening. I found myself gasping at some of the creative and literary imagery that was created. Like The Library of Babel this novella celebrates the diversity of writing and crafting ideas. It dances around structure, gender and conventional storytelling and instead challenges our perception of how we have come to know stories. Really loved this one and will want to read more from the author.

Thank you to Pushkin Press and NetGalley for providing access to an eARC to review!

I was expecting this to be more of a quest/mystery, but instead it was pretty abstract and I don't think I fully understood what it was trying to do. Once I finished it, I wasn't sure what the 'message' of the book was - or if it was even meant to have one.

I guess it's kind of about the commercialisation of creativity and how people can't just create for creation's sake anymore, but there wasn't much solid here. I'm not really sure of the audience I would recommend this to either, as since I got lost along the way I don't think it will be particularly memorable or something I'd like to try and reread to see if I could 'get' it on a second attempt.

Overall a strange little story, but not sure that its a 'good' strange...

This was a highly unusual but entertaining novella. The main character is chasing after an author known as Tomoyuki Tomoyuki who has written many books in local languages for very specific settings. As other reviewers have pointed out, this novella is a bit hard to describe because it is so abstract. It's a short read but don't expect a clear plot or an ending. This kind of reminds of some Roberto Bolaño's more abstract work with a hint of Haruki Murakami's style. It might be a good read for a short flight or while waiting at the airport. I give it 3.5 stars, which rounds up to 4.

Wow, what a book. There is no beginning or end, it appears to loop infinitely. I am truly mystified.

A.A. Abrams, a wealthy entrepreneur, is on the hunt for a mysterious writer who can write in any language, publishing all around the world. The trail is unpredictable and puzzling.

The blurb of the book only scratches the surface of what this story is about. From the start, you as the reader try to make sense of this magical world, and the possibilities within it. Symbolism is often blurred with reality. It feels like the story is playing mind games with the reader. If you’re up for the challenge, and enjoy creation discussed in complex metaphors, I recommend giving this a read.

Thank you to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for this ARC.

A strange man spends all his time in an airplane attempting to capture ideas in a little butterfly net. A mysterious author is impossible to locate as they keep travelling and writing in different languages.

I love the premise of this novella. The highlight of the book for me, was the reflection on languages and the culture that brought them into being and what words actually reflect: the word for say, apple (or coriander), doesn’t actually necessarily reflect the same image in all languages. In some it might be a colour, in others it may be an aroma, or something else entirely, but translated they would all become one single word, apple (or coriander).
The book also has at its core the subject of literary translation and the reflection of how certain books can only be enjoyed in a particular situation.
However, I really struggled with the narration. I struggled to get who was speaking/being spoken about and when it was supposed to be taking place. It is very jumpy, from one thing to the next and hard to follow. Maybe it is on purpose and I just not getting it?

I think anyone who enjoys very surreal stories and happens to be very interested in writing, literary translations and languages would be intrigued by this book.

This is one of those cases where a short story seems rather too long because of too much details at a go. Otherwise the writing is okay. However, you will feel awkward with the interaction of the characters. Well… the plot does not seem to work for me. When one character tries to overshadow most parts of a story, either it works well or it totally ruins it. Guess not the book for me.

Thank you, Pushkin Press, for the advance reading copy.

"Imagine a story - one that's utterly meaningless, contradictory, incoherent. What if there's a language somewhere in the world that would render that story logically sound? A language in which that story would become perfectly ordinary, all its strangeness concealed from view?"

For the first two-thirds of the book, I was quite lost. It reads in a jarring, strange, nonsensical way, leaving you unsure of what you read even a page or a paragraph before, and even more unsure of where it could possibly be going from there. It certainly seemed to be utterly meaningless, contradictory, incoherent...

and then, it clicked. There was a language, an 'aha moment' that translated the meaning & rendered the story (a bit more) logically sound. The conclusion brought it full circle (at least, I think it did?), and I enjoyed the way the writing kept me fully engaged and constantly thinking.

By the end, I was surprised to find myself enjoying it. This book won't be for everyone, but for those who enjoy lyrical, non-traditional structure, it will be as delightful as catching a butterfly in your net.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the ARC!

It was a clever and amusing story about the relationship between art, and commerce. It jumps around perspectives so at time I got a little lost with which character I was reading. However, for those of you who like unconventional stories that play with story structure, I would recommend this book.

The story is slippery and weird and hard to catch but it was exactly the kind of weird I love most in books. Reading this book made me happy and I want to reread it soon! This is one of those rare books that make me feel like I see eye to eye with the words on every page; it‘s probably not for everyone but for some it will be a perfect fit.

What a strange, strange book. The blurb, which describes a story about "the global pursuit of a mysterious writer who somehow writes in dozens of languages," is not necessarily inaccurate but also really doesn't get at what this book is doing or what it is like. There is indeed a mysterious writer, referred to as 'Tomoyuki Tomoyuki' though no one knows their real name (or, indeed, anything else about them); this writer leaves traces of their presence in many places, bits and pieces of writings left behind, each in the local language of the place these scraps are found. How does Tomoyuki do this? Are they a brilliant language learner, or is something else going on?

I am not even going to pretend that I fully understood this book. I found it beautiful, and I found myself captivated by it. I'm not quite sure what I just read, yet I'd read it again. Perhaps this book is best read under a cat? I did try this, and it didn't seem to help with my comprehension. (If this makes no sense to you and you're curious as to why reading a book with a cat on your lap might fundamentally alter the reading experience, well... you'll have to read this book and find out, though you may come away not knowing any more than when you started).

Content warnings: none, really.

Thank you to Pushkin Press & NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.

This book is about the pursuit of a mysterious author around the world by an affluent entrepreneur and their corporation.

This was an oddly fascinating yet confusing read. Highly likely the format contributed to how the story started off weirdly for me; it was a bit of a mess at first but I grew into it about a quarter in. I would consider this read very fast-paced and smooth. The magical realism of how the characters intertwined was quite a rollercoaster ride and alluring, with hints of mystery and talks of languages and fantasies. Throughout the book I kept wondering how it was going to end, and I ended up liking the conclusion.

What a peculiar little book. I'm not sure where it started or ended. In fact I'm not entirely sure you couldn't just finish it and begin again immediately without noticing the join.

The story, such as it is, winds all over the place, changing characters names, gender, purpose, future and past. The eponymous butterfly may or may not be real as are the strange characters that inhabit the book.

The blurb suggests a book about a polyglot who writes strange books and a man called AA Abrams search for this strange author. The reality is so much stranger than that.

I am struggling to describe any of this book but I think that may well be the point, at least I hope so. Anyway if you like strange Japanese literary fiction then you will like this. I enjoyed it but (like Sayaka Murata's work) I couldn't exactly define why. I just did.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the advance review copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for a digital review copy of "Harlequin Butterfly" in exchange for my honest and voluntary review.

This is a surreal and witty novella musing on the nature of language and translation wrapped up in a lose storyline about the global pursuit of a mysterious writer who somehow writes in dozens of languages. The target, known as “Tomoyuki Tomoyuki,” moves from one place to another, producing work in the local language before moving on to another part of the world and agents employed by the Abrams Institute seek to make sense of the writer’s erratic movements and baffling writing habits, but come to find that within each puzzle is yet another puzzle, waiting to be unravelled.

And that is this novella summed up - a puzzle in a puzzle. It's a beautiful, meandering, disjointed, dream-like oddity that doesn't have a fully coherent narrative (disconcerting being that it is a book about language, words and their use) and as I got to the end I'm not 100% sure I understood or got it all but knew that I liked it and felt that in many ways it had an ethereal beauty that often comes from Japanese works.

Is it pretentious nonsense or beautiful wordy art?! It's up to us as readers to navigate the uncertainty and make those decisions ourselves but for me I veer towards the beauty, won over by the butterflies and musings about the nature and use of language especially in translation, very apt as this is a new English translated work.

For me, I'd like to come back to this again in the future and have a second read through knowing what I know now - that it lacks a traditional story structure, or fully fleshed out characters, and that time and narrative voices are fluid and non linear. For many readers these elements may make this unreadable for them but I enjoyed the challenge. I liked its strange and whimsical world and found the surrealist elements kept my brain engaged.

Not one for all readers but it will find its home especially for those who go into it with an open mind and open heart.

Released 5 March 2024

"Imagine a story - one that's utterly meaningless, contradictory, incoherent. What if there's a language somewhere in the world that would render that story logically sound?"

There is something a little odd about reading a book so much about language and translation, in translation. This book is less a coherent narrative than it is a disjointed, dreamlike rumination on the nature of ideas and storytelling and language. I found myself getting to the end, not really sure what had been happening, but feeling as though it meant a lot to me if only I could figure out what. In some ways, I felt as though I had been made a part of the story, like I was reading something in a language I recognized but couldn't quite remember learning.

In other ways, I felt like I wasn't really understanding anything at all, and maybe the author and translator had simply created pretentious chaos and I was projecting meaning where I wanted to find it. Or maybe I just wasn't smart enough to 'get' it.

Regardless, I choose to hold on to my pretensions and call it beautiful, but I can fully understand where others might disagree.

Either way, if you're looking for recommendations here are mine: avoid this book if you're looking for traditional story structure, characters, or world building. If you're bothered by things such as never being sure exactly who's narrating to you, when you changed narrators, or what is going on also give it a miss.

If you like strange, whimsical, slightly pretentious musings or you're just looking for something to generate an atmosphere of quite melancholy, this might be for you.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the free eArc. My review is honest and independent.

I loved this short book. It's unique, spellbinding, captivating, and extremely creative. The whole time I was reading it, I was trying to figure it out, and at the end, I finally did - I think. Books that make me think rank high in my list. This book made me think, and was entertaining. It's experimental fiction, it's literature, and it's fantastic.

This was… confusing. As someone who loves translated literature, I was curious about this book about an elusive author, Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, who seemingly can write in any language. And while this book was interesting in that manner, what interested me more was the thoughts the book inspired about what/who an author is.

Frankly, I’m not entirely sure what happened in this book. Reading it felt a bit like analysing a semi-abstract painting, but of which you can only see a hundredth at a time. However, I enjoyed it. To continue the painting analogy, the small pieces, which I did not fully understand or connect, were beautiful to me. Mostly I would recommend Harlequin Butterfly to anyone who wants to be a writer, and is wanting more experience with non-linear, non-clear writing.

Something I thought about while reading (but maybe a thought that was dispelled by the ending?) was how the characters were written. You get to know them in the way you get to know a stranger on a plane. Maybe you chitchat about plane anxieties, or the food, and you get an understanding of them, their personality and some of their experiences. And then — you move on.