Biminim Strimpoonanamam is real. Though he has come to the attention of American readers through the pages of a novel—Kurtis Davidson’s What the Shadow Told Me—Biminim is a seventy-one-year-old flesh-and-blood native of Thailand who has been practicing the art of English-to-English translation for more than forty years.

You read right: Biminim is an English-to-English translator in the employ of a syndicate headquartered in Myanmar (a country notorious for the non-enforcement of its lax copyright laws) that bootlegs American writers (and others) for Asian readers who enjoy English-language literature. However, rather than do the obvious—bootleg the original English-language books—the Myanmar syndicate pays Biminim to find translations of the works into Asian languages and then to translate them back into English.

Confused? We’re not sure if we understand it ourselves. Apparently, Biminim’s incomprehensible untranslations—with their bizarre imagery, intricate word play, and anachronistic references to American pop culture—are more appealing to the Asian market than legitimate translations that accurately translate the original texts.

Kurtis Davidson met Biminim in an internet chatroom devoted to discussion of the life and works of Ralph Ellison, whose Invisible Man Biminim was untranslating at the time. They became fast friends, and Davidson prevailed upon Biminim to send a copy of one of his books, The Best of the Short Story of the World.

Davidson was immediately convinced that The Best of the Short Story was the most horrifyingly brilliant book he had ever read. Biminim’s titles only begin to hint at his bizarre literary house of mirrors: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” becomes “Jackpot!”; Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” becomes “Choker”; Franz Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” becomes “The Paint Eater”; Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog” becomes “Dog-Faced Woman”; Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” becomes “Spic-and-Span Shiny Somewhere”; and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” becomes “Excellent Youth with Suntan”!

After a brief negotiation with Biminim’s publisher, Spine Monkey Press, Kurtis Davidson arranged for a small print-run of The Best of the Short Story to be offered for sale in the English-as-a-first-language market. Don’t miss this chance to marvel at Asia’s most inexplicable literary export. And, as they always say at Spine Monkey Press, “Eat your toast!”