HIROMI KAWAKAMI was born in Tokyo in 1958. She has written numerous novels—among them Strange Weather in Tokyo, The Nakano Thrift Shop and Manazuru—and short-story collections, and has garnered many of Japan’s top literary prizes. Kawakami was shortlisted for both the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize, and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in more than twenty languages. Her story “A Snake Stepped On” in this collection won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1996.
LUCY NORTH, born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, studied at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University and has a PhD in modern Japanese literature. Her translations of Taeko Kōno were published in Toddler Hunting and Other Stories. Lucy lived for many years in Boston and Tokyo, and is now based in Hastings, on the south coast of England.