Hiromi Kawakami
Born in 1958 in Tokyo, HIROMI KAWAKAMI is one of Japan’s most popular contemporary novelists. She is the recipient of the Pascal Short Story Prize for New Writers and the Akutagawa Prize. Her novel Drowning won both the Ito Sei Literature Award and Joryu Bungaku Sho (Women Writers’ Prize) in 2000. Her novel Manazuru won the 2011 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize. Strange Weather in Tokyo (Sensei no kaban) won the Tanizaki prize in 2001 and was shortlisted for both the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Publications
Hiromi Kawakami on Granta.com
Fiction | The Online Edition
I Won’t Let You Go
Hiromi Kawakami
‘I have no idea why I felt so drawn to the mermaid, but the pull was irresistible.’
Fiction by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Allison Markin Powell.
Fiction | The Online Edition
People From My Neighbourhood
Hiromi Kawakami
‘First prize went to the dog school principal, who of course had submitted a cartoon dog.’ Translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen.
Fiction | The Online Edition
Parfait
Hiromi Kawakami
‘He comes all the way here after he died and the two of you are making small talk?’ New fiction by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell
In Conversation | Issue 127
Hiromi Kawakami | Podcast
Hiromi Kawakami, Anne Meadows & Asa Yoneda
‘Looking back, I never was aware of feeling that close to death, but actually if you think about it, just living every day there is a very small but definitely existing chance of death, whatever you're doing, wherever you are.’
Essays & Memoir | Issue 127
Blue Moon
Hiromi Kawakami
‘Rather than death itself, it is the disappearance of traces that seems unbearable and sad. The disappearance of all signs that I existed.’
Fiction | Issue 127
God Bless You, 2011
Hiromi Kawakami
‘If the god of uranium really exists, then what must he be thinking? Were this a fairy tale of old, what would happen when humans broke the laws of nature to turn gods into minions?’ Hiromi Kawakami on the nature gods of Japan.
Fiction | Issue 127
The Moon and the Batteries
Hiromi Kawakami
‘His full name was Mr Harutsuna Matsumoto, but I called him ‘Sensei’. Not ‘Mr’ or ‘Sir’, just ‘Sensei’.’
