Yōko Ogawa

Yōko Ogawa is a Japanese writer born in 1962 in Okayama, Japan, who graduated from Waseda University with a degree in literature and began publishing fiction in 1988 while raising her son. Robinson. She has authored over 50 works of fiction and nonfiction, winning every major Japanese literary award including the Akutagawa Prize for Pregnancy Diary and the Yomiuri Prize for The Housekeeper and the Professor, as well as international honors like the Shirley Jackson Award and American Book Award for works such as The Memory Police. Her notable English-translated novels explore themes of memory and human cruelty in gentle yet penetrating prose. Books.