A Hundred Years and a Day: 34 Stories

This ground-breaking collection from Tomoka Shibasaki, author of the acclaimed novel Spring Garden, pushes the short story to a new level.

In these stories of human connection in a contemporary, alienated world, people come together to share pieces of their lives, then part. We meet the women who share a house after the outbreak of war before going their separate ways once it is over; the man who lives in a succession of rooftop apartments; the diverging lives of two brothers who are raised as latch-key kids by factory workers; the old ramen restaurant that endures despite the demolition of all surrounding buildings; people who watch a new type of spaceship lift off from a pier that once belonged to an island resort; and more.

These 34 tales from all over the planet have the compulsive power of news reports, narrated in a crisp yet allegorical style.

TOMOKA SHIBASAKI published her debut in 2000 when she was 27; it was adapted by Isao Yukisada and released as a film in 2004 (A Day on the Planet). Her 2007 novel Sono machi no ima wa (That Town Today) was awarded the Geijutsu Sensho Newcomers Prize, the Sakunosuke Oda Award, and the Sakuya Konohana Award. In 2010, her novel Asako I & II received the Noma Newcomer's Award; the book was subsequently adapted for film by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and screened at Cannes. In 2014, Shibasaki won the Akutagawa Prize for her novel Spring Garden, now translated into many languages, including English (published by Pushkin Press).

POLLY BARTON is an award-winning translator based in the UK. Her translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press, 2017), Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis / Soft Skull Press, 2020), There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury, 2021), and So We Look to the Sky by Misumi Kubo (Arcade, 2021). After being awarded the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, in 2021 she published Fifty Sounds, her reflections on the Japanese language. Her translations of stories by Aoko Matsuda, Tomoka Shibasaki, and Kikuko Tsumura appear in MONKEY New Writing from Japan.