Dead in Venice | Masahiko Shimada | Granta Magazine

Dead in Venice

Masahiko Shimada

Translated by Dan Bradley

‘If I wasn’t a fish spawned in the Brenta river, why was I so compelled to keep returning?’ Masahiko Shimada on his many trips to Venice.

Masahiko Shimada

Masahiko Shimada was born in Tokyo in 1961. He began writing fiction while studying Russian at university and, while still an undergraduate, gained the first of six nominations throughout his career for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. Shimada’s prolific and experimental oeuvre includes the novels Music for a Sonambulant Kingdom (1984, winner of the Noma New Writer's Award and translated into English by Philip Gabriel), Higan Sensei (1992, a parody of Sōseki Natsume's classic novel Kokoro that won the Izumi Kyōka Prize), and essays and plays inspired by Poe and Dante.

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Translated by Dan Bradley

Dan Bradley lives and works in Cardiff. Alongside writing fiction, he has published English translations of work by Japanese authors, including Hitomi Kanehara and Masahiko Shimada.

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