Yōko Ogawa

Life & Background:

Born in 1962 in Okayama, Japan, Ogawa is a prolific author known for her precise prose and unsettling narratives. Though soft-spoken in interviews, her fiction often delves into psychological horror, memory, and decay. She has won many literary prizes in Japan.

Inspirations:

Influenced by the minimalism of Japanese aesthetics, psychological fiction, and memory studies. Her writing evokes comparisons to Murakami and Kafka.

Themes in Her Work:

• Memory, trauma, and erasure

• Intimacy and violence

• Beauty and grotesquerie coexist

• Loneliness and quiet forms of madness 

• Fragility of time and identity

Notable Works:

• The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003)

• The Memory Police (1994, English trans. 2019)

• Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales (1998)