Mieko Kawakami:
(Osaka, 1976) is a Japanese feminist poet, writer and singer. She lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Mieko Kawakami grew up in a poor single-parent family. She was a singer, hostess and was best known in Japan as a blogger. She wrote poetry and short stories. Her first novel Hevun won the Murasaki Shikibu Prize for literature in 2010. Heaven, the English translation of Hevun translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. For Ai no yume to ka, Kawakami was awarded the Tanizaki Prize in 2013.
I knew that is was cruel to be so optimistic, but, in my solitude, I couldn’t resist the urge and spent entire days basking in idiotic fantasies, sometimes verging on prayer.
