Let us begin at the end. Japanese novelist Minae Mizumura concludes her study of the impact of the global dominance of the English language with the observation, “If more English native speakers walked through the doors of other languages, they would discover undreamed-of landscapes. Perhaps some of them might then begin to think that the truly blessed are not they themselves, but those who are eternally condemned to reflect on language, eternally condemned to marvel at the richness of the world.”On first reading, the sentence jars. “Eternally condemned to marvel”? Yet Mizumura’s meaning is clear – those who write in languages other than English are confronted, day and night, with their own languages’ difference – and demise – in the f