Read more at Japan Forward

— by Sara Doel: When Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman came out in English in 2018, it was an immediate hit, selling over 650,000 copies and winning the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.

Although Japanese writers such as Haruki Murakami and the British-Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro have steadily gained popularity in the West, contemporary Japanese literature remains rare in the English-speaking world. Besides the language barrier, one of the main reasons for this is the cultural difference. As such, translated works offer a fascinating insight into a society which is often very different from our own.

Convenience Store Woman tells the tale of 36-year-old combini (convenience store) worker Keiko Furukawa, a lifelong dokushinsha (singleton) who has always felt out of place in society…

Image courtesy of Grove Press

April 23, 2019 — 10:44