Overview

Piercing, inventive, and darkly humorous, the fifty-two stories in Aoko Matsuda's The Woman Dies explore the persistent and pervasive sexism faced by women in modern-day Japan. The normalization of violence against women on screen and in the media is confronted in the story 'The Woman Dies', while others invest inanimate objects with their own perspectives, examine the aesthetics of technology, and use clever wordplay to riff off the absurdity of contemporary life. Masterfully translated by Polly Barton, the translator of Asako Yuzuki's Butter, The Woman Dies is more than a simple thrill ride. Blending humour, surrealism, and sharp social critique, it's a vast, multifaceted theme park of ideas by one of Japan's most exciting writers.

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9781787705876

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Reviews

“Matsuda shines with her distinctive imagery and focused commentary. Readers will find plenty to enjoy.” * Publishers Weekly * Praise for Where the Wild Ladies Are ""Funny, beautiful, surreal and relatable, this is a phenomenal book.""—The Guardian ""Delightfully uncanny.""—New York Times

Author Information

Aoko Matsuda is a writer and translator. In 2013, her debut book Stackable was nominated for the Mishima Yukio Prize and the Noma Literary New Face Prize. In 2019, her short story 'The Woman Dies', published by Granta, was shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award. In 2021, her short story collection Where the Wild Ladies Are, published by Soft Skull Press, was highly praised by the BBC, Guardian, NY Times, and The New Yorker, and was selected as one of the 10 Best Fiction Book of 2020 by TIME. It was nominated for a Ray Bradbury Prize sponsored by the LA Times and won The Firecracker Award in the fiction category and World Fantasy Award for Best Collection in 2021. She has translated work by Karen Russell, Amelia Gray and Carmen Maria Machado into Japanese. Polly Barton is a translator of Japanese literature and non-fiction, currently based in Bristol. Her most recent full-length translations include Butter by Asako Yuzuki, Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki, Where the Wild Ladies Are by Matsuda Aoko, and Kikuko Tsumura's novel There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job. Her debut non-fiction work, Fifty Sounds, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

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