Earthlings | Sayaka Murata | Granta

Excerpt

Earthlings

Sayaka Murata

Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

£8.99

Sayaka Murata

One of the most celebrated of the new generation of Japanese writers, Sayaka Murata has won not only the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, but the Gunzo, Noma, and Mishima Yukio Prizes as well. Her story, 'A Clean Marriage', was featured in Granta 127 Japan. She is 36-years-old and works part-time in a convenience store.

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Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese writers. Her translation of Sayaka Murata’s Akutagawa prizewinning novel Convenience Store Woman was one of the New Yorker’s best books of 2018, Foyle’s Book of the Year 2018, and was shortlisted for the Indies Choice Award and Best Translated Book Award. Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings (October 2020) has already been named one of Time’s ‘must-read’ books of 2020. Her translation of Kyoko Nakajima’s Naoki prizewinning The Little House was published in February 2019, and Things Remembered and Things Forgotten a short-story collection by the same author, co-translated with Ian MacDonald, is due out in spring 2021).  

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I loved this book! It easily converted me to being an alien. A radical, hilarious, heartbreaking look at the crap we have all internalized in order to fit in and survive

Elif Batuman

£8.99