Convenience Store Woman | Granta

  • Published: 02/05/2019
  • ISBN: 9781846276842
  • 129x20mm
  • 176 pages

Convenience Store Woman

Sayaka Murata

Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Meet Keiko.

Keiko is 36 years old. She’s never had a boyfriend, and she’s been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years.

Keiko’s family wishes she’d get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won’t get married.

But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she’s not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store…

For literary refreshment, try the playful, artful Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Best Summer Books, Observer

Exhilaratingly weird and funny ... Unsettling and totally unpredictable - my copy is now heavily underlined

Sally Rooney, Guardian

A sure-fire hit of the summer... quirky and profound

Irish Times

The Author

One of the most celebrated of the new generation of Japanese writers, Sayaka Murata has won not only the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, but the Gunzo, Noma, and Mishima Yukio Prizes as well. Her story, ‘A Clean Marriage’, was featured in Granta 127 Japan. She is 36-years-old and works part-time in a convenience store.

More about the author →

The Translator

Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese writers. Her translation of Sayaka Murata’s Akutagawa prizewinning novel Convenience Store Woman was one of the New Yorker’s best books of 2018, Foyle’s Book of the Year 2018, and was shortlisted for the Indies Choice Award and Best Translated Book Award. Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings (October 2020) has already been named one of Time’s ‘must-read’ books of 2020. Her translation of Kyoko Nakajima’s Naoki prizewinning The Little House was published in February 2019, and Things Remembered and Things Forgotten a short-story collection by the same author, co-translated with Ian MacDonald, is due out in spring 2021).  

More about the translator →

From the Same Author

Sayaka Murata on Granta.com

Fiction | The Online Edition

Earthlings

Sayaka Murata

An excerpt from Earthlings, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

Fiction | The Online Edition

Faith

Sayaka Murata

‘Hey, Nagaoka, wanna start a new cult with me?’

New fiction by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

Art & Photography | Granta 144

Chameleon

Tomoko Sawada & Sayaka Murata

‘If Sawada can transform herself without limit, maybe I can too.’ Sayaka Murata introduces Tomoko Sawada’s photographs, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.