Why Japan? In Fifty Sounds, winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, Polly Barton attempts to exhaust her obsession with the country she moved to at the age of 21, before eventually becoming a literary translator. From min-min, the sound of air screaming, to jin-jin, the sound of being touched for the very first time, from hi'sori, the sound of harbouring masochist tendencies, to mote-mote, the sound of becoming a small-town movie star, Fifty Sounds is a personal dictionary of the Japanese language, recounting her life as an outsider in Japan. Irreverent, humane, witty and wise, Fifty Sounds is an exceptional debut about the quietly revolutionary act of learning, speaking, and living in another language.

Autorentext

Polly Barton is a translator of Japanese literature and non-fiction. Born in 1984, and raised in west London, she studied philosophy at Cambridge before travelling with the JET Programme to teach English in Sado Island, Japan. Her translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press, 2017) and Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press, 2020). She won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize for Fifty Sounds.

Klappentext

WINNER OF THE 2019 FITZCARRALDO EDITIONS ESSAY PRIZE: Fifty Sounds won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, an annual competition for unpublished writers that seeks to reward the best proposal for a book-length essay. Previous winners include Matthew McNaught's Immanuel and Joanna Pocock's Surrender, which was published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo in May 2019 and in North America by House of Anansi in September 2019. WRITING & TRANSLATION: Leaning on the works of Wittgenstein and Sontag,Fifty Sounds is an attentive and generous exploration of language, writing and translation that will appeal to readers of with an interest in linguistics and translation and to fans of ANNE CARSON, LYDIA DAVIS, and KATE BRIGGS. TRAVEL WRITING & JAPAN: As a record of Polly Barton's time in Japan, Fifty Sounds will appeal to fans of travel writing, especially to those with an interest in ever-popular Japan. Fifty Sounds carefully avoids romanticising the country, seeking instead to delve more deeply and honestly - yet still affectionately - into its cultural and linguistic landscape.

Zusammenfassung
Fifty Sounds is a personal dictionary of the Japanese language, recounting her life as an outsider in Japan. Irreverent, humane, witty and wise, Fifty Sounds is an exceptional debut about the quietly revolutionary act of learning, speaking, and living in another language.