10-26 May
Become a FriendContemporary Japanese Writers
Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2020 has been cancelled
It is with regret that we have taken the very difficult but ultimately inevitable decision to cancel the 2020 Norfolk & Norwich Festival.
With the rapidly escalating health-crisis and with the safety of our audiences, staff and artists at heart, we have taken the decision that it is impossible for us to deliver the Festival this May.
If you have booked a ticket for the Festival, you do not need to do anything. You are entitled to a refund and we will be in touch soon. Please bear with us during this difficult time. If you have the capacity to make a donation of part or all of your ticket value, we would be extremely grateful – it would help ensure we’re well-placed to support artists and be able to present future Festivals.
Two of the most celebrated writers in Japan today discuss their writing and the portrayal of womanhood and the female body in contemporary Japan. Murata’s Convenience Store Woman was one of the hottest Japanese fiction releases of 2018, and Kawakami has been singled out as a favourite of Haruki Murakami.
‘I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami’s novella Breasts and Eggs…breathtaking’ – Haruki Murakami
‘I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami’s novella Breasts and Eggs…breathtaking’ – Haruki Murakami
‘Mieko Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction with Breasts and Eggs.’ – Economist
‘Murata’s gloriously nutty deadpan prose and even more nuttily likable narrator are irresistible.’ – The Observer on Convenience Store Woman
‘A sure-fire hit of the summer… quirky [and] profound’ – Irish Times on Convenience Store Woman
Important information
Age guidance: 14+
Duration: 1 hour
About the writers
Born in Osaka prefecture in 1976, Mieko Kawakami began her career as a singer and songwriter before making her literary debut in 2006. Her first novella My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, published in 2007, was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize and awarded the Tsubouchi Shoyo Prize for Young Emerging Writers. The following year, Kawakami published Breasts and Eggs as a short novella. It won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary honor, and earned praise from the acclaimed writer Yoko Ogawa. Kawakami is also the author of the novels Heaven, The Night Belongs to Lovers, and the newly expanded Breasts and Eggs, her first novel to be published in English. She lives in Japan.
One of the most celebrated of the new generation of Japanese writers, Sayaka Murata has won not only the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, but the Gunzo, Noma, and Mishima Yukio Prizes as well. Her story, ‘A Clean Marriage’, was featured in Granta 127 Japan. She is 36-years-old and works part-time at a convenience store. Convenience Store Woman is her first novel in English translation.
Tickets
In partnership with International Literature Festival Dublin
City of Literature Weekend is a Norfolk & Norwich Festival and National Centre for Writing presentation, programmed by National Centre for Writing.
