Fifty Sounds

In this dazzling debut, Polly Barton reflects on her experience of moving to the Japanese island of Sado at the age of twenty-one and on her journey to becoming a literary translator. Written in fifty semi-discrete entries, Fifty Sounds is a personal dictionary of the Japanese language that draws together a variety of cultural reflections - from conformity and being an outsider, to the gendering of Japanese society, and attitudes towards food and the cult of 'deliciousness' - alongside probing i...