Hiromi Kawakami

Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo and graduated from Ochanomizu Women’s College in 1980. Her first book was a collection of short stories entitled Kamisama (‘God’) published in 1994. In 1996 she won the prestigious Akutagawa Award for Hebi a Fumu (‘Tread on a Snake’). Her novel Sensei no Kaban (‘The Briefcase’) won the 2001 Tanizaki Prize and was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize. Published in the UK as Strange Weather in Tokyo (trans. Allison Markin Powell), it was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, 2014.