百年泥 (The Mud of a Century)

Yūka Ishii (born 1963 in Hirakata, Osaka, Japan) is a Japanese novelist who made her literary debut at age 54 with the novel Hyakunen doro (The Mud of a Century), inspired by her experiences teaching Japanese in Chennai, India, during the 2015 floods. Japanese Gazebo Books. The work won the 49th Shincho Prize for New Writers in 2017 and the 158th Akutagawa Prize in 2018, marking her as a late-blooming literary sensation. Read more →