Last night, I finished reading The Knight Stranger by Soji Shimada. The novel left a deep impression on me — at times, I had to put the book down because of how heavy and tragic certain moments were. And yet, I couldn’t stop reading. In total, it took me four nights to get through the whole book. I read it in Russian, partly because I read to unwind rather than to look up new vocabulary in a dictionary, and partly because I assumed the English translation would be just as much of an interpretation as the Russian one. But as I’m writing this post, I realized that the Russian title is actually quite far from both the Japanese original and the English version. That probably means the translation itself took some liberties too. When you start learning foreign languages, you can’t help but wonder how much gets lost — or even altered — in translation. Sometimes the author’s original tone, or even their intent, ends up reshaped. Either way, I really enjoyed the book. I love Japanese authors for the way they skillfully tap into the depths of human fear. I’m glad Soji Shimada has written plenty more — I’ll definitely be reading more of his work.