'A tender and nuanced novel exploring love, obsession, alienation, work and language with an immense sense of interiority. Polly Barton is capable of capturing fleeting, seemingly unremarkable feelings with perfect precision that cuts through to the reader's very core - it made me stop and gasp several times as I recalled feeling exactly this way. It speaks to how we yearn to connect but often fail to truly see each other, and to the fundamental, gargantuan power of a crush.'
- Anastasiia Fedorova, author of _Second Skin_

POLLY BARTON is a writer and Japanese literary translator. Her translations include _Butter_ by Asako Yuzuki, _Hunchback_ by Saou Ichikawa, _Where the Wild Ladies Are_ by Aoko Matsuda, and _There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job_ by Kikuko Tsumura. She has published two works of non-fiction, _Fifty Sounds_, for which she won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and _Porn: An Oral History_. _What Am I, A Deer?_ is her debut novel.