Mieko Kawakami

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Join us for an unmissable evening with one of Japan's most celebrated young novelists.

The Booker-shortlisted author of Heaven and Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami makes a rare visit to the UK to launch Sisters in Yellow, a gripping, stylish noir set in Tokyo’s shadowy underbelly.

Hana is fifteen, hopeful and living in a tiny Tokyo apartment with her mother, with no money and no security. Then Kimiko enters her life - a bright, magnetic force who offers escape. Together they open Lemon, a shabby bar that becomes a fragile haven of friendship, independence and possibility. For a moment, Hana feels invincible. In the narrow alleys of Sangenjaya however, nothing is as it seems, and hope can quickly turn to danger.

Twenty years later, Kimiko stands trial for a shocking crime, and Hana must confront her own past and its devastating consequences.

Dark, hypnotic and utterly compelling, Sisters in Yellow confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation. Join us as she discusses sisterhood, betrayal and the stories that haunt us.

‘This is not the Japan you find in novels about cats, cafés and bookshops. Kawakami draws back this cosy façade to reveal the grimy reality underneath — and she does it with consummate style. With Sisters in Yellow, she proves she is still the most exciting Japanese novelist at work today’ The Times

‘I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami’ Haruki Murakami

Mieko Kawakami is the acclaimed author of the internationally best-selling novel Breasts and Eggs, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of Time’s Best 10 Books of 2020. Her other novels, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, include Heaven, shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, and All the Lovers in the Night. In 2024, Sisters in Yellow won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in Japan. Her books, translated into over forty languages, are known for their insights into the female body, and philosophical questions surrounding gender, class, and ethics in modern society. Born in Osaka, Mieko lives in Tokyo, Japan.

Presented in partnership with Picador and The Japan Foundation.

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