Pretty Polly | Shinichi Hoshi | Granta

Pretty Polly

Shinichi Hoshi

Translated by Eli K.P. William

‘Compared to all of you, I’m not the handsomest guy or the smartest, which might’ve caused me all sorts of grief if I was a landlubber. But I spent my life at sea, so I got by.’


Shinichi Hoshi

Shinichi Hoshi was one of Japan’s most accomplished and influential science fiction writers. He wrote 1001 short-short stories in his 26-year career, and received the twenty-first Mystery Writers of Japan Award for his book Moso Ginko (Delusion Bank). A short film based on his story ‘Hana to Himitsu’ (‘Flowers and Secrets’) won an award at the Venezia International Children’s Movie Festival. Hoshi is also the author of many novels, including Koe no Ami (Voice Net) and Buranko no Mukode (The Other Side of the Swing).

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Translated by Eli K.P. William

Eli K.P. William is a Canadian novelist based in Japan. His dystopian trilogy, The Jubilee Cycle, is set in a future Tokyo. The series includes Cash Crash Jubilee (2015), The Naked World (2017), and A Diamond Dream (forthcoming fall 2021). His first full-length novel translation is A Man (2020), also the first novel by Akutagawa Prize winning author, Keiichiro Hirano, to be published in English. To learn more visit his website or follow him on Twitter.

Image © Kuromusi

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