Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 157
ISBN: 9781781724828
Publication date: February 18, 2019
Price: £9.99
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 157
ISBN: 9781781724835
Publication date: February 18, 2019
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
From Seven to the Sea explores the emotions of childhood and an almost limitless capacity for imagination, invention, and fearlessness as it charts the survival of seven-year-old Esther as she negotiates her mother and stepfather’s dysfunction, and a school environment that exposes her to further prejudice and injustice.
It is a window onto the world of a child who rejects convention and expectation, and who embarks on an expedition into liberty and freethinking; and who, each day, in place of school, sets out to sea.
Jayne Joso
Jayne Joso is a writer and artist who has lived and worked in Japan, China, Kenya and the UK. She is the author of four novels: From Seven to the Sea, My Falling Down House – a work described by Sho Konishi, Professor of Japanese Studies, Oxford as ‘a remarkable achievement’, and by Richard Lloyd-Parry, The Times, Asia Correspondent as ‘a novel I’ve been waiting for all my life.’- , Perfect Architect and Soothing Music for Stray Cats. Her journalism has been published in various Japanese architectural magazines and in the UK’s Architecture Today magazine. She has also ghost written on Japanese architects for the German publisher, Prestel Art.
Her literary works are largely concerned with matters of human empathy, issues surrounding home, homelessness; and cultural identity. Joso is twice the recipient of Arts Council England awards to support her writing. She also received the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Award and was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Award 2017. Most recently she gained a small grant from the DAIWA Anglo-Japanese Foundation to continue her research in Japan.
Joso now plans to work on a variety of new Japan focussed projects that centre on exploring and discoursing contemporary life, engaging by equal measure with the banal and the sublime.
Her new collection of short fiction Japan Stories, with illustrations by Japanese Manga artist Namiko, was published by Seren in May 2021.
Photo by Paul Musso, Hay Festival.
“My overwhelming impression of Jayne Joso’s novel From Seven to the Sea is of glittering sunlight that blinks off every surface until you can only see your surroundings through the shards of your own eyelashes. Beautiful, but brimming with half-glimpses of potential treachery.”
Judy Darley, SkyLightRain
‘A beautifully written and masterfully calibrated portrayal of the search for sanctuary and enchantment within a childhood under siege.’
Chloe Aridjis
‘With this tender story of trauma in a child’s life, brimming with sympathy and insight, Jayne Joso hymns the compassion of strangers and the consolations of the sea.’
Horatio Clare
