{"product_id":"an-i-novel-9780231192132","title":"An I-Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eMinae Mizumura's \u003ci\u003eAn I-Novel\u003c\/i\u003e is a semi-autobiographical work that takes place over the course of a single day in the 1980s. Minae is a Japanese expatriate graduate student who has lived in the United States for two decades but turned her back on the English language and American culture. After a phone call from her older sister reminds her that it is the twentieth anniversary of their family's arrival in New York, she spends the day reflecting in solitude and over the phone with her sister about their life in the United States, trying to break the news that she has decided to go back to Japan and become a writer in her mother tongue. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePublished in 1995, this formally daring novel radically broke with Japanese literary tradition. It liberally incorporated English words and phrases, and the entire text was printed horizontally, to be read from left to right, rather than vertically and from right to left. In a luminous meditation on how a person becomes a writer, Mizumura transforms the \"I-novel,\" a Japanese confessional genre that toys with fictionalization. \u003ci\u003eAn I-Novel \u003c\/i\u003etells the story of two sisters while taking up urgent questions of identity, race, and language. Above all, it considers what it means to write in the era of the hegemony of English--and what it means to be a writer of Japanese in particular. Juliet Winters Carpenter masterfully renders a novel that once appeared untranslatable into English.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eMinae Mizumura is one of Japan's most respected novelists, acclaimed for her audacious experimentation and skillful storytelling. Three of her books, all of which won major literary awards in Japan, have been translated into English, all by Juliet Winters Carpenter: \u003ci\u003eA True Novel\u003c\/i\u003e (2013), \u003ci\u003eThe Fall of Language in the Age of English\u003c\/i\u003e (Columbia, 2014; cotranslated with Mari Yoshihara), and \u003ci\u003eInheritance from Mother\u003c\/i\u003e (2017). \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eJuliet Winters Carpenter is a prolific translator of Japanese literature. She received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 1980 for Abe Kobo's \u003ci\u003eSecret Rendezvous\u003c\/i\u003e and in 2014 for Mizumura's \u003ci\u003eA True Novel\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50494385881362,"sku":"9780231192132","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_59ccbc62-e445-4a3c-b5da-19150e672d65.jpg?v=1730663856","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/an-i-novel-9780231192132","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}