The Place of Shells

Ishizawa, Mai/ Barton, Polly (Translator)

ISBN 10: 0811237788 / ISBN 13: 9780811237789

Edité par New Directions, 2025

160 pages. 8.00x5.25x0.50 inches. In Stock. N° de réf. du vendeur 0811237788

Synopsis :

In the summer of 2020, as Europe is beginning to open back up after the first phase of the pandemic, a young Japanese woman based in the German city of Göttingen is working on a PhD about the iconography of medieval saints. She waits at the train station to meet her old friend from graduate school, Nomiya, who died nine years earlier in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan, but has suddenly reemerged without any explanation.

When Nomiya arrives, the narrator guides him through Göttingen's scale model of the solar system, talking about her studies, her roommate and their mutual friends. Yet it isn't long before his spectral presence in the city begins to fray the narrator's psyche and destabilize the world beyond: eerie discoveries are made in the forest, Pluto begins disappearing and reappearing, and snags run in time's fabric. The narrative continues to spiral and unfold to include the Japanese physicist Terada Torahiko, mysteriously sprouting teeth, Saint Lucia, all set against the ever-lingering presence of death.

With a literary style reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, and Yu Miri, The Place of Shells is a hypnotic, poetic novel that explores the ebbing and flowing of memory, its physical manifestations, its strange and sudden metaphors, and the overwhelming stranglehold of trauma.

À propos des auteurs: Mai Ishizawa was born in 1980 in Sendai City, Japan, and currently lives in Germany. Her debut novel, The Place of Shells, won the Akutagawa Prize.

Polly Barton is a writer and Japanese translator based in Bristol. Her translations include Aoko Matsuda's Where the Wild Ladies Are, Kikuko Tsumura's There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job, and Tomoka Shibasaki's Spring Garden. In 2019, she won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize for her debut book Fifty Sounds. Her second book, Porn: An Oral History, is forthcoming.

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : The Place of Shells
Éditeur : New Directions
Date d'édition : 2025
Reliure : Paperback
Etat : Brand New