BlazeVOX has just release Goro Takano’s beast of a novel With One More Step Ahead. Goro is a Japanese write who writes in English, and is very emphatic about the fact that English is his second language (it even says it in his bio). But he’s certainly spent his time studying the language (they even gave him a doctorate for all that study), and he’s turned out one hell of a book. Goro’s approach to English from alien origins, and, moreover, his approach to the structure of the novel from this place, creates a disorienting and completely new reading experience. This thing feels like a big fat, softcover textbook in your hands and is well worth the bills.

Here’s my blurb from the book’s back cover:

“The words in Goro Takano’s With One More Step Ahead seem to try to fill ahole, a void left behind by the abdication of self-image, of nationality, or identity. these words create a novel that exhibits the formalistic daring of John Barth while telling a story in a non-native tongue that, like Vladimir Nabokov’s English, creates a language more volatile than any written with ingrained mastery. Ultimately, the words never fill any hole. Instead, they take us deeper and deeper down to a dark and disorienting place that continually excites the reader with its threats and possibilities.”