Polly Barton in Conversation

Join Blackwell’s Manchester for an evening with writer and Japanese translator Polly Barton, discussing her debut novel What Am I, A Deer? in conversation.

The novel follows a young woman who moves to Frankfurt to work for a major gaming company, driven by a desire for reinvention. Her routine is disrupted when she encounters a stranger who returns her lost umbrella, sparking an intense and consuming fixation. What unfolds is a year-long spiral of obsession, shaped as much by this fleeting connection as by the charged escapism of late-night karaoke.

With sharp existential insight and dark humour, Barton’s debut explores the tensions between authenticity and performance, fantasy and reality. Set against a backdrop of pop music and neon-lit interiors, the novel captures the disorienting pull of desire and the search for meaning in contemporary life.

Polly Barton is an acclaimed writer and translator of Japanese literature, known for bringing authors such as Asako Yuzuki, Aoko Matsuda and Kikuko Tsumura to English-language audiences. Her non-fiction includes Fifty Sounds, which won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and Porn: An Oral History.