Photo/Illutration Mieko Kawakami (Photo taken by Ryohei Tsukada, provided by Kodansha Ltd.)

Mieko Kawakami’s novel “Heaven” has been shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize hosted in Britain, a translation category of the prestigious Booker Prize.

The English version of the novel from the Kodansha Bunko paperback series was translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd.

She is the first Japanese author to be shortlisted for the prize since Yoko Ogawa, who was nominated for “The Memory Police” in 2020.

The winner will be announced May 26.

Kawakami’s story centers around the narrator, a second-year junior high school student who is routinely bullied by classmates because of his crossed eyes.

The novel questions the value of good and evil through bullying.

Originally published by Kodansha Ltd. in 2009, the novel was awarded the culture minister’s Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize.

Translated into English in 2021, “Heaven” has featured in The New Yorker and other publications.

Born in 1976, Kawakami won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for “Breasts and Eggs” in 2008.

She won the Tanizaki Prize for “Dreams of Love, etc.” in 2013.

Translations of the extended version of “Breasts and Eggs,” which garnered the Mainichi Cultural Award in 2019 under the original title of “Natsumonogatari,” will be available in at least 40 countries.

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