Already breaking records in Japan, Honeybees and Distant Thunder is rich with details. Author Riku Onda has a true gift for creating a cast of characters who share a love for music.

Each contestant was wonderfully drawn, and I felt moved, as if I were truly hearing each and every musical piece. I also felt the significance of how a competition can create connections between people' Then, by bouncing around different characters, the author has the opportunity to repeat the same ideas and sentences again -- sometimes verbatim. Thanks to the help of Pegasus Books publicist Julia Romero, I was able to correspond with Gabriel about his work on Honeybees and Distant Thunder, the art of translation, and embracing friendship in the process of making art. Tender and intense, Honeybees and Distant Thunder is the unflinching story of love, courage and rivalry as three young people come to understand what it means to truly be a friend. In a small coastal town just a stone’s throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Over the course of two feverish weeks, three students will experience some of the most joyous—and painful—moments of their lives. Though they don’t know it yet, each will profoundly and unpredictably change the others, for ever.

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It’s interesting to hear you talk about taking the Japanese readers’ interpretation into account. Is that normally part of your process? How do you work to conjure the same emotion in an English-language reader as the original did in Japanese? With 13 judges from around the world, the competition unfolds. These pianists are among the best of the best, having perfected the necessary technical skills. The goal of the competition is to find those who can take it to the next level.

The translator, Philip Gabriel, does a great job on this English translation. He gives us some useful explanations regarding Japanese language and culture, helping us understand nuances that can often get lost in translation. His description of a character’s name, Aya Eiden, whose last name Eiden, 栄伝, roughly means ‘to convey glory’ in English, springs to mind. I feel that this kind of information allows us to better grasp the story and are helpful to anyone interested in Japan.While global fiction is reaching ever-higher critical reception, the translators who open the doors to these new worlds for us are still often neglected. Translators like Jennifer Croft (translator of Nobel-winning Olga Tokarczuk) have worked to correct this, such as through the #TranslatorsOnTheCover campaign, but there is still much work to be done. The names for the chapters often didn’t make sense to me because they included a classical piece name (as it’s the focus of the story), but it wasn’t distracting. The round division was clever though! This is what made the entire story and its inhabitants come to life, it was so vivid you could taste the music. I was afraid I would get bored because I knew pretty much nothing about classical music let alone their world, never did I think I’d be so invested in something I have no active passion for. Incredible!

Though Honeybees and Distant Thunder is centered around the Yoshigae International Piano Competition, a fictional contest set in a rural seaside town, the story is strongly character-driven. We follow 16-year-old Jin Kazama (an unknown prodigy and son of a beekeeper), Aya Eiden (a burned-out former child prodigy), Masaru Carlos Levi Anatole (a pedigreed contestant dubbed “The Prince of Juilliard”) and Akashi Takashima (an older entrant looking for his last shot at fame) as they battle through this grueling two-week event, which aims to find emerging new talents. Tender and intense, Honeybees and Distant Thunder is the unflinching story of love, courage and rivalry as three young people come to understand what it means to truly be a friend. Driven young people face off at a prestigious Japanese piano competition in this propulsive and poetic novel. This was a type Jin knew well. Farmers and horticulturists, people working with nature, and especially with plants, shared an astonishing patience. When dealing with the natural world there really was little humans could do. You could make an effort, yet there was scant guarantee of reward. Philip, you’ve translated a number of monumental books from Japan, perhaps most notably the work of Haruki Murakami. Can you tell me what drew you to the work of Riku Onda?

Each of them will break the rules, awe their fans and push themselves to the brink. But at what cost? Foster’s latest, highly imaginative work of creative nonfiction envisages the lives of animals, from gannets to otters, in this harsh, human-dominated world. An urban fox cub befriends a young girl before encountering the terror of a hunt, while an orca matriarch is shot at by rampaging day-trippers on boats. Evocative and beautifully written, it’s a deeply immersive read. Our Missing Hearts Onda's passion for music is immense and infectious, bursting out of each of her characters with their unique views of the craft. The characters though… the characters. We meet a lot of people, but never for a second did I lose count of who’s who and I was invested in all of them from the start. They’re all so unique and their passion and drive is written down so clearly and beautifully that you cannot not fall for them!

Set in a dystopian near future, Ng’s outstanding third novel envisages a draconian US in which Asians and Asian-Americans are treated with mistrust, contempt and violence. Twelve-year-old Bird was eight when his Chinese-American mother vanished, after which his father destroyed every trace of her. When Bird receives a mysterious letter from her, it sets him on a quest to uncover the cause of her disappearance. Exploring the insidious repercussions of repressive regimes, the novel is a cautionary tale, a moving family drama and a compelling testament to the power of art. Riku Onda postawiła na opis, na bogactwo metafor i dobrze zrobiła, bo czyż Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Liszt, Beethoven nie byli mistrzami metafory? Oczywiście, że byli. Ich muzyka rzuca słuchaczom przed oczy konkretne sceny, konkretne obrazy. Ich dzieła są opowieściami, których w konwencjonalny sposób nie widać, ale ponieważ je słyszymy, to i widzimy oczami wyobraźni, a wyobraźnia przecież nie ma granic. To begin with, I deeply appreciated how it was written with a laser-focus on a small set of topics: the nature of music and how it impacts our lives. I felt the story’s main purpose was to assist the author present her ideas about music, and there are quite a few places where she waxes a bit on the philosophical side. Some people might be turned off by this but I really enjoyed it. A little research confirmed my hunch the author herself is a serious fan of music, especially Piano music. This book also touches on related areas such as the life of a musician and the dynamics of music competitions. In a small coastal town just a stone's throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Over the course of two feverish weeks, three friends will experience some of the most joyous - and painful - moments of their lives.The atmosphere of the piece was serene, modest, uncomplicated. Yet the world it portrayed was vast. Like a miniature indoor garden or a tea house. Where a part could evoke the whole. Where, from a tiny fragment, you felt something massive and endless. Or perhaps you could say it inspired a paradoxical view of the universe, where the whole world was contained in it precisely because of its smallness.