Shame | Mieko Kawakami | Granta

Shame

Mieko Kawakami

Translated by Louise Heal Kawai & Hitomi Yoshio

Mieko Kawakami

Born in Osaka prefecture in Japan, Mieko Kawakami made her literary debut as a poet in 2006. Her first novella My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, published in 2007, was awarded the Tsubouchi Shoyo Prize for Young Emerging Writers. The following year, Kawakami published Breasts and Eggs as a novella, and won Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. In 2016, she was selected as Granta Best of Young Japanese Novelist. Kawakami is also the author of the novels Heaven, All the Lovers in the Night, and the newly expanded Breasts and Eggs, her first novel to be published in English, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd. One of her novellas, Ms Ice Sandwich, was also translated into English by Louise Heal Kawai. She lives in Tokyo.

More about the author →

Translated by Louise Heal Kawai

Louise Heal Kawai was born in Manchester, England, and resides in Yokohama, Japan. She is the translator of Ms Ice Sandwich by Kawakami Mieko, The Honjin Murders by Yokomizo Seishi, and many novels, short stories and poetry by a variety of Japanese authors. Her translation of Yokoyama Hideo’s Seventeen was longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award. She is currently working on a theatre translation project with the New National Theatre, Tokyo and Royal Court Theatre, London.

More about the translator →

Translated by Hitomi Yoshio

Hitomi Yoshio is Associate Professor of Global Japanese Literary and Cultural Studies at Waseda University in Japan. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2012, and has published articles on women writers and feminist literary communities in late 19th and early 20th century Japan. Her current research focuses on the contemporary writer Mieko Kawakami, and her translations of Kawakami’s works have appeared in Granta, Freeman’s, Monkey Business, Denver Quarterly, Words without Borders, Wasafiri and The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories.

More about the translator →