#pollybarton — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #pollybarton, aggregated by home.social.
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Asako Yuzuki's novel about female obsession offers timely and shrewd social critiques — but not catharsis. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2026/03/20/books/asako-yuzuki-hooked-review/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #culture #books #asakoyuzuki #pollybarton #japanseliterature #translation
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Mai Ishizawa’s novel blends the emotional haze of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the early days of COVID-19. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2025/03/10/books/place-of-shells-review/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #culture #books #maiishizawa #pollybarton #books #translation #literature #311 #akutagawaprize
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Two Japanese translated books in this year's long list, Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami (tr. Asa Yoneda) and Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa (tr. Polly Barton).
#InternationalBooker #HiromiKawakami #AsaYoneda #SaouIchikawa #PollyBarton
The International Booker Prize 2025 | The Booker Prizes
https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2025 -
In her collection, Akutagawa Prize-winning author Tomoka Shibasaki juggles with specificity and vagueness through almost comically long full sentence titles and unnamed characters who often disappear altogether. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2025/02/22/books/tomoka-shibasaki/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #culture #books #tomokashibasaki #pollybarton #japaneseliterature #translatedfiction
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This is the first of 金井美恵子 Mieko Kanai's books I've read (unfortunately, despite having written more than 30 books and enjoying a cult following in Japan, very few of her works have been translated into English, and even this one was written 25 years ago but only translated into English last year), and I loved it. So much so that I already ordered her "Oh, Tama!: A Mejiro Novel" from the local bookshop.
It's almost entirely an inner monologue, written in long, meandering sentences, that quickly makes you feel you are right inside Natsumi's head, a middle-class housewife and mother in Tokyo, describing an often stifling, routine life. But it's not without humour, and there are some very funny and sharp observations that made me laugh out loud. And while it may seem chaotic on the surface, it's cleverly constructed - e.g. I loved how a passage where Natsumi lists the layout and exact contents of her local supermarket in painstaking detail makes an identical reappearance right at the end of the book.
And Polly Barton's translation is stunning - it can't have been easy to translate a book like this, whose dense sentences more often than not span multiple pages (the opening sentence alone is at least four pages long), and wildly skip between first and third person perspectives and narratives.
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Eight translators reveal their top picks for untranslated hidden gems that will delight Japanese literature lovers. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2023/12/20/books/japanese-literature-wish-list-translators/?utm_content=buffer91763&utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=bffmstdn #culture #books #japaneseliterature #translation #pollybarton #sambett #davidboyd #andrewfitzsimons #lucynorth #allisonmarkinpowell #ginnytapleytakemori #asayoneda
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Originally published in 1997, “Mild Vertigo” is just as relevant today in its unpacking of meaning within the ennui of our often stultifying, consumer-driven modern age. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2023/06/17/books/book-reviews/mieko-kanai-mild-vertigo/?utm_content=buffer13654&utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=bffmstdn #culture #reviews #literature #miekokanai #pollybarton