The Lonesome Bodybuilder

Winner of the Akutagawa Prize and the Kenzaburo Oe Prize "This may well give Your Duck Is My Duck a run for its money as best title of the century. People around the world have been whispering Motoya's name in my ear. Now she's translated into English!" -Gary Shteyngart, Vulture, Most Anticipated Fall Books

Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. Her first story, "Eriko to zettai," appeared in the literary magazine Gunzo in 2002. Motoya won the Noma Prize for New Writers for Warm Poison in 2011; the Kenzaburo Oe Prize for Picnic in the Storm in 2013; the Mishima Yukio Prize for How She Learned to Love Herself in 2014; and Japan's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. Her books have been published or are forthcoming in French, Norwegian, Spanish, and Chinese, and her stories have been published in English in Granta, Words Without Borders, Tender, and Catapult.

1. I Called You By Name 2. Paprika Jiro 3. The Lonesome Bodybuilder 4. Night for Magotchigyao, Same as Usual 5. Typhoon 6. Q&A 7. How to Burden the Girl 8. Why I Can No Longer Look at a Picnic Blanket Without Laughing 9. An Exotic Marriage 10. Straw Husband 11. The Dogs