The Mud of a Century
By (Author) Yka Ishii
Translated by Haydn Trowell
Gazebo Books
Gazebo Books
1st September 2023
Australia
General
Fiction
Paperback
120
Width 130mm, Height 215mm
Yka Ishiis debut novel The Mud of a Century was a major literary success in Japan where it won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.
Several days after a once-in-a-century flood moves through the Indian city of Chennai, choking the Adyar River with the titular mud, a Japanese woman contracted to an IT company as a language instructor finds herself caught up in a deluge of flashbacks and memories, reflecting on unspoken words and unlived lives and contemplating the muddy chaos of her own karma.
Told in a magic realist stream-of-consciousness style evocative of the subtle, wry sense of humour found in the traditional Japanese narrative art of rakugo, The Mud of a Century explores the interrelated bonds between self and other, Japan and India, past and present, fact and fantasy, and material and spirit.