Polly (Translator) Barton
Author
Language
English
Description
"A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing - and ideally, very little thinking. She is sent to a nondescript office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods. But observing someone for hours on end can be so inconvenient and tiresome. How will she stay awake?...
Author
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In this witty and exuberant collection of linked stories, Aoko Matsuda takes the rich, millenia-old tradition of Japanese folktales-shapeshifting wives and foxes, magical trees and wells-and wholly reinvents them, presenting a world in which humans are consoled, guided, challenged, and transformed by the only sometimes visible forces that surround them. A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable...
3) Mild vertigo
Author
Series
New Directions paperbook volume 1562
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"The apparently unremarkable Natsumi lives in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband and two sons: she does the laundry, goes to the supermarket, visits friends, and gossips with neighbors. Tracing her conversations and interactions with her family and friends as they blend seamlessly into her own infernally buzzing internal monologue, Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying reality of being unable to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae...
Author
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story. There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine. Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Center convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation's imagination...
Author
Publisher
Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc
Pub. Date
©2021.
Language
English
Description
"Fifty Sounds is a genre-defying meditation on language from an electric new voice. When Polly Barton moved to a remote island in Japan at twenty-one, she did not anticipate the total sensory bombardment: "It is a possession, a bedevilment, a physical takeover." Divided into fifty onomatopoeic Japanese phrases, this elegantly written and deeply introspective memoir recounts her path to grasping the basics and becoming not only a literary translator...
Author
Publisher
Fitzcarraldo Editions
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"How do we talk about porn? Why is it that when we do talk about porn, we tend to retreat into the abstract? How do we have meaningful conversations about it with those closest to us? In Porn: An Oral History, Polly Barton interrogates the absence of discussion around a topic that is ubiquitous and influences our daily lives. In her search for understanding, she spent a year initiating intimate conversations with nineteen acquaintances of a range...
Author
Publisher
Verso
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"Born from the obsessive and highly idiosyncratic mind of a cult figure of the Japanese underground, these stories borrow themes and subjects familiar to readers of Philip K. Dick and fuses them with a conflicted, tortured, and intense imagination"--
Author
Publisher
Pushkin Press
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Description
"Divorced and cut off from his family, Taro lives alone in one of the few occupied apartments in his block, a block that is to be torn down as soon as the remaining tenants leave. Since the death of his father, Taro keeps to himself, but is soon drawn into an unusual relationship with the woman upstairs, Nishi, as she passes on the strange tale of the sky-blue house next door. First discovered by Nishi in the little-known photo-book 'Spring Garden',...
Author
Publisher
Thames & Hudson
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"A personal tour of Tokyo's architecture, as seen through the eyes of one of the world's most acclaimed architects who is also designing the primary venue for the Tokyo Olympic games. Tokyo is Japan's cultural and commercial epicenter, bursting with vibrancy and life. Its buildings, both historical and contemporary, are a direct reflection of its history and its people. Kengo Kuma was only ten years old when he found himself so inspired by Tokyo's...
Series
Publisher
Iperborea/Europa Editions
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Description
"Visitors from the West look with amazement, and sometimes concern, at Japan's social structures and unique, complex culture industry; the gigantic scale of its tech corporations and the resilience of its traditions; the extraordinary diversity of the subcultures that flourish in its "post-human" megacities. The country nonetheless remains an intricate and complicated jigsaw puzzle, an inexhaustible source of inspiration for stories, reflections,...