What does it mean to lose yourself – and is that something you should be aiming for? A young woman with little interest in games takes up a job in Frankfurt at a famous gaming company, naively set on reinvention. On her morning commute, in the familiar clutches of tedium and self-loathing, she encounters a nice-eyed stranger who returns her forgotten umbrella and finds herself catapulted into a dizzying, year-long whirlwind of obsession – not just with this endlessly attractive spectre, bu...

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 pers...

El porno es uno de los contenidos más consumidos en Internet y, sin embargo, sigue siendo un tabú del que poco se habla, pese a la relevancia social que tiene.En este libro, Polly Barton investiga las causas de la ausencia de debate en torno a un tema silenciosamente ubicuo pero muy influyente en nuestro día a día. A lo largo de un año de trabajo, Barton se entrevistó con diecinueve personas de edades, géneros y orientaciones sexuales muy distintas para tratar de entender este fenóm...

How do we talk about porn? Why it is that when we do talk about porn, we tend to retreat into the abstract? How do we have meaningful conversations about it with those closest to us? In Porn: An Oral History, Polly Barton interrogates the absence of discussion around a topic that is ubiquitous and influences our daily lives. In her search for understanding, she spent a year initiating intimate conversations with nineteen acquaintances of a range of ages, genders and sexualities ab...

What does it mean to lose yourself - and is that something you should be aiming for? A young woman with little interest in games takes up a job in Frankfurt at a famous gaming company, naively set on reinvention. On her morning commute, in the familiar clutches of tedium and self-loathing, she encounters a nice-eyed stranger who returns her forgotten umbrella and finds herself catapulted into a dizzying, year-long whirlwind of obsession - not just with this endlessly attractive spectre, bu...

Dimmi che porno guardi e ti dirò chi sei: e se le cose non stessero proprio così? Per capire l'effetto del porno nelle nostre vite, dovremmo innanzitutto parlarne. Ma parlarne in maniera aperta e onesta è complicato, perché mette in gioco stereotipi sessuali, aspettative sociali e rivela una vita intima di cui non sempre ci sentiamo sicuri. E questa la teoria di fondo di Polly Barton, che attraverso una serie di conversazioni informali con diciannove amiche e conoscenti prova a scandagliar...

THE MILLION COPY #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF BUTTER IS BACK WITH A NEW NOVEL OF OBSESSION‘Tender and thrilling it’s Yuzuki at her best’ ELLE‘Deliciously satisfying’ iPAPER‘Enjoyable and addictive’ INDEPENDENT‘Fantastically dark’ ERIN KELLYEriko really wouldn't mind being savaged, if it was her best friend doing the savaging …

A Paperback OriginalNamed a Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, The Guardian, Forbes, Oprah Daily, Lit Hub, and Publishers WeeklyFrom the author of the international bestseller Butter comes a chilling and perceptive novel about obsession, female friendship, and the slow unraveling of two livesEriko’s life looks perfect—from her prestigious job at a Japan...

Hell of Solitude presents a varied and eclectic selection of writings by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, one of the most important and beloved Japanese writers of the twentieth century. Bringing together fiction, poetry, and philosophical prose – much of it appearing in English for the first time here – this collection showcases the range and intensity of Akutagawa's imagination. Moving from the whimsical and fantastical to the grave and introspective, the pieces reveal a writer of extraordi...

In this "delightfully uncanny" collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales, humans live side by side with spirits who provide a variety of useful services—from truth-telling to babysitting, from protecting castles to fighting crime (The New York Times Book Review)A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable lanterns; a cheerful lover who visits every night to take a luxurious ba...

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer, and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true storyThere are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarineGourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, whom she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination, ...

A love story that feels both new and achingly true, capturing the intensity, uncertainties and intimacy of falling for someone.Art student Isogai first models for one of his tutors, the much older Yuri, then begins a passionate affair with her. As he gets to know her better, he struggles to understand his own emotions and his place in the world, just as he yearns to be closer to her and for her to share more of herself with him.Don't Laugh at Other Peop...