Excerpt from Suggested in the Stars by Yoko Tawada, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In any case, Dr. Velmer's been coming down here once in a while to ask for help. Today was one of those days.

"You must be bored," he said, "spiritually, I mean. Were you reading Schopenhauer to pass the time? Ha, ha, ha. Sorry to disturb you. But if you're not too busy reading, I'd like you to help me out." He was grinning the whole time. I nodded and stood up. This Schopenhauer guy must be pretty interesting —  but not as much as a hospital corridor. White tights marching by. That'll be nurses. A big mask, with a face hiding behind it. Shapeless clothes, like blue garbage bags. Just finished an operation, maybe. A doctor with a vein standing out blue in his forehead. A bed with wheels rolling down the hall, and someone lying on it, with tubes coming out everywhere. Another doctor in a white coat with big, baggy pockets, looking like he's doesn't have much to do. A patient in blue striped pajamas. All in the same corridor; some real busy and others free and easy.

I was hurrying after Dr. Velmer so I wouldn't lose sight of his back, but I still couldn't stop gawking around. A lady in a wheelchair, with hair like a white cap on her head, was interesting to watch. She stopped, right in the middle of the corridor, and stared up at the hospital ceiling. I looked up, too, and saw a little ball, caught in a crack. Maybe a kid had thrown it up there.

Dr. Velmer opened the door to a certain room and went inside, so I followed him. I'd been in this room before. When he opened a locker, I saw a big box on the bottom shelf.

"Take this box and line up the things inside it on the table," he said. "As you know, my lumbago's so bad I can't squat down or even bend over."

Dr. Velmer's about to start that strange game he plays with the patients. He'll show them a toy, and ask, "What is this?" The patient loses if he answers, but wins if he doesn't say anything. Really weird.

A cute, soft teddy bear; a sticky rubber snake; a hard rabbit covered in fur and with shiny glass eyes; a leaf; a pebble; a knife; a nail; an eraser. And lots of other things. I stick my hand in the box, pick up whatever I touch, and line up the things on the table.

"Munun, you're very flexible, physically I mean. Probably spiritually as well. But flexibility isn't always a good thing. To lead a large organization like the Royal Hospital, you need a hard, rigid spirit."

The way Velmer talks is kind of funny, but I can mostly understand him. Not like the cowboys I see on TV, who don't know how to talk so everyone can understand them. That's why there's a tiny invisible man hiding at the bottom of the screen, writing what they say in Normal Language. I can't believe how fast he is  —  there's never enough time to look at each letter. Velmer is much easier to understand than those cowboys, but still a little harder than Normal Language. He says things that are a little off sometimes, or there'll be something missing, or the words kind of blur together. Our counselor told us we could ask her anything, so one day I asked, "Why is the way Dr. Velmer talks different from Normal Language?" She looked relieved, maybe because I hadn't just told her that someone had treated Vita and me badly, and answered, "What you call Normal Language is Danish. Dr. Velmer is Swedish, so he probably speaks Swedish."

Excerpted from Suggested in the Stars by Yoko Tawanda. Copyright © 2024 by Yoko Tawanda. Excerpted by permission of New Directions Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.