Day in the Life

A Day in the Life contains twelve portraits of the vivid and curious realities experienced by a man in his sixties. These stories focus on the tiny paradoxes and everyday ridiculousness we each witness and of which we often take no note. Ranging from a visit to an exhibition of blurry photographs each taken with an exposure time of only a single second, to the story of a man stalked through the streets by a stranger for no greater a crime than making eye contact, A Day in the Life demonstrates why Senji Kuroi is considered one of the leading figures of contemporary Japanese literature. 

Twelve stories focusing on the tiny paradoxes and everyday realities experienced by a man in his sixties. 

Senji Kuroi is the penname of Shunjiro Osabe, a novelist from Tokyo who graduated in economics from Tokyo University. He worked as a “salaryman” while writing novels and was an Akutagawa Ryunosuke Prize candidate in 1968. The following year he published Jikan (Time) and in 2001 won the Tanizaki Jun’ichiro Prize for his novel Life in the Cul-de-Sac, which is available in English translation. He also has won the Yomiuri Prize and the Noma Prize and currently serves as president of the Japan Writer’s Association as well as a member of the selection committee for the Akutagawa Prize.Giles Murray was born in London in 1966. After graduating from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, he moved to Tokyo to study Japanese. Among his translations are Kumiko Kakehashi’s So Sad to Fall in Battle, Masahiko Fujiwara’s The Dignity of the Nation, and Yo Hemmi’s Gush.