Hitomi Kanehara

Hitomi Kanehara stopped attending high school at eleven, left home as a teenager and began sending her stories by email to her writer father who helped edit them. Her debut, Snakes and Earrings, was published when she was twenty-one and won the top Japanese literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. One of the judges, celebrated writer Ryu Murakami, said her book was 'easily the top choice, receiving the highest marks of any work since I became a member of the selection panel'. The Japanese edition...See more

Hitomi Kanehara stopped attending high school at eleven, left home as a teenager and began sending her stories by email to her writer father who helped edit them. Her debut, Snakes and Earrings, was published when she was twenty-one and won the top Japanese literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. One of the judges, celebrated writer Ryu Murakami, said her book was 'easily the top choice, receiving the highest marks of any work since I became a member of the selection panel'. The Japanese edition of Snakes and Earrings has since topped bestseller lists and sold over a million copies. See less