Anna Sherman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied Greek and Latin at Wellesley College and at Lincoln College, Oxford. Sherman worked as an editor at Millennium Journal of International Studies, Financial Times Energy, and then, after moving to Asia in 2001, for Hong Kong University Press and other imprints in Hong Kong and Tokyo.The Bells of Old Tokyo is her first book.
From Sherman's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Bells of Old Tokyo?Visit Anna Sherman's website.
A: Tokyo is difficult to know for many reasons. It’s huge, of course, but also it's also hard to know because of how quickly the city changes. Not just year to year or month to month but day to day. Tokyo is a kaleidoscope.
I didn’t plan to write about the time-telling bells. Then I happened to see one. It was HUGE, bigger than I was, and when I stood next to it, I felt electricity: This…! This! I have to write about this!
I needed a way to shrink Tokyo, to fold it up like origami: it would be impossible to write about the entire place. The bells let me collapse geography and time.
Q: How do you see your depiction of Tokyo perhaps differing from other books or travel memoirs about the city?
A: Richard Lloyd-Parry wrote People Who Eat Darkness about...[read on]
The Page 99 Test: The Bells of Old Tokyo.
--Marshal Zeringue