Hiromi Kawakami

Hiromi Kawakami () (April 1st 1958 -), novelist Japan ease born with Tokyo. It is graduate university for woman Ochanomizu.

Its first news, Kamisama (literally: God), was published in 1994. In 1996, it was rewarded by the Prix Akutagawa for Hebi wo fumu (literally: To go on a snake). In 2000, it accepted the Prix Tanizaki for its news Sensei No kaban ( the Soft Years , literally: The satchel of the professor), telling the birth of a history between a thirty year young woman, Tsukiko, and one of its former professors of literature, septuagénaire, met by chance in a coffee which will see the evolution of their relation in the course of the years and of episodical and always random meetings.

Since its beginnings in 1994, it definitively became one of the most popular writers in Japan, and one of those which manage to offer their stories in occident (one will find easily in France the soft years and Abandons , a collection of news, his other books being rarer).

Partial bibliography

Kamisama (God), 1994.
Hebi wo fumu (蛇を踏む - To go on a snake), 1996.
Abandonments (溺レる, 1999), Actes Sud, 2003.

the Soft Years (センセイの鞄 - Sensei No kaban , 2000), Picquier, 2003

Tsukiko crosses by chance, in the coffee where it will drink glass every evening after its work, its former Japanese professor. It is, seems it, a confirmed bachelor, as for him, it is widowed since long years. And it is imperceptibly, almost in their defending heart, that with the wire of the meetings the bonds are tightened between them. Meetings, there is much of it. The book chooses to tell of it only one dozen, each one like an account with share. The gathering of mushrooms, chicks bought at the market, the festival of the flowers, twenty-two the one night old stars of autumn ..... These stories are so simple that it is difficult to say why one cannot leave them. Perhaps this is the air of happiness that one breathes there, that of the things not ordinary, but so thin that they volitilize when one tries to touch them. This book acts as a charm, it collects in full flight the softness of the life before she flees.

This light which comes from the sea (光って見えるもの、あれは, 2003), Picquier, 2005.

Random links: