Under the Eye of the Big Bird

HIROMI KAWAKAMI was born in Tokyo in 1958. In 2001 she won the Tanizaki Prize for Strange Weather in Tokyo, which became an international bestseller and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 International Foreign Fiction Prize. Her other fiction in translation includes The Nakano Thrift Shop, The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino, People from My Neighbourhood, and The Third Love. Kawakami has contributed to editions of Granta in both the UK and Japan and is one of Japan's most popular contemporary novelists. ASA YONEDA was born in Osaka and studied language, literature, and translation at University of Oxford and SOAS University of London. She now lives in Bristol, U.K. In addition to Yukiko Motoya, she has translated works by Banana Yoshimoto, Aoko Matsuda, and Natsuko Kuroda.

'Expansive and inventive...The voices and narrators across these disparate tales are diverse and intriguing...Through a simple, direct prose style, Kawakami does a great job of getting under the skin of all her characters...unsettling, thought-provoking and utterly unique...Kawakami's style is playful and light among the poignancy and depth. Wonderful writing' - The Big Issue