Mieko Kawakami

Mieko Kawakami is the acclaimed Japanese author of the international bestseller Breasts and Eggs (2008). It was awarded the 138th Akutagawa Prize. Kawakami’s literary awards also include the Tanizaki and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. The novel Heaven was on the shortlist for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

Her works have been translated into over 30 languages, including Vietnamese, Albanian, Estonian, and Arabic.

Mieko Kawakami was born in Osaka. She first found employment as a hostess and later as a clerk in a bookstore. Then Kawakami decided to pursue singing, leading to the release of three albums. However, in 2006, she shifted her focus entirely to writing.

She made her literary debut as a poet and published her first novella, My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, in 2007. Before winning the Akutagawa Prize in 2008 for Breasts and Eggs, Kawakami was known in Japan as a blogger.

In 2010, her first full-length novel and second book translated into English, Heaven, won the Murasaki Shikibu Prize for Literature. The novel is set in Japan in 1991. The narrator is a 14-year-old teenager whose right eye looks the other way than his left and is bullied by other students.

Her novel, Ms Ice Sandwich, made the shortlist of the 2018 edition of the Grand Prix of Literary Associations.

Her books are known for their poetic qualities, insights into the female body, and preoccupation with ethics and modern society. Her most recent novel is All the Lovers in the Night (2022).

Kawakami is also known for a series of interviews with writer Haruki Murakami, in which she notably asked him about women and sexualization in his novels.

Mieko Kawakami lives in Tokyo.

Photo credit: Twitter @mieko_kawakami