Polly Barton is a Japanese literary translator. Her translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki. She won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize for Fifty Sounds. Porn: An Oral History is her second book. She lives in Bristol.

‘[Barton's] uncertainty is key to the success of her project, opening it up for discussion rather than narrowing around polemic. After finishing the book I found myself talking to friends about porn in a way I never had before… Much of our contemporary economy is constructed to hook us to online platforms on which porn makes up a vast amount of content, accessible to anyone old enough to work a phone. To avoid thinking about the cultural significance of that is not just absurd, but a denial of both responsibility and reality. Barton wants to restore our ability to deal with this stuff, and the first step, as she puts it, is to talk about it.’— Sophie Elmhirst, Sunday Times ‘Book of the Week’

Polly Barton is a Japanese literary translator. Her translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki. She won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize for Fifty Sounds. Porn: An Oral History is her second book. She lives in Bristol.

‘[Barton's] uncertainty is key to the success of her project, opening it up for discussion rather than narrowing around polemic. After finishing the book I found myself talking to friends about porn in a way I never had before… Much of our contemporary economy is constructed to hook us to online platforms on which porn makes up a vast amount of content, accessible to anyone old enough to work a phone. To avoid thinking about the cultural significance of that is not just absurd, but a denial of both responsibility and reality. Barton wants to restore our ability to deal with this stuff, and the first step, as she puts it, is to talk about it.’— Sophie Elmhirst, Sunday Times ‘Book of the Week’

Polly Barton is a Japanese literary translator. Her translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki. She won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize for Fifty Sounds. Porn: An Oral History is her second book. She lives in Bristol.

‘[Barton's] uncertainty is key to the success of her project, opening it up for discussion rather than narrowing around polemic. After finishing the book I found myself talking to friends about porn in a way I never had before… Much of our contemporary economy is constructed to hook us to online platforms on which porn makes up a vast amount of content, accessible to anyone old enough to work a phone. To avoid thinking about the cultural significance of that is not just absurd, but a denial of both responsibility and reality. Barton wants to restore our ability to deal with this stuff, and the first step, as she puts it, is to talk about it.’— Sophie Elmhirst, Sunday Times ‘Book of the Week’