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Yuka 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. |
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