Japanese novelist Akira Otani wins British crime novel

Novelist Akira Otani made history this week, becoming the winner of the Best Translated Crime Novel Award in Japan. Her victory was announced on July 3 by the Crime Writers Association of Britain (CWA).

Baba Yaga’s Nighttranslated by Sam Bett, is competing with five other novels, including butter go through Japanese writer Asako Yuzuki. Otani’s novel is a queer thriller that follows Yoriko Shindo, a fierce hybrid warrior who becomes Princess Yakuza’s bodyguard.

Although several famous works by Japanese writers such as Hideo Yokoyama, Kotaro Isaka and Keigo Higashino have been included in the translation category of the Dagger Awards, no one has won the award.

Courtesy of Kawade Shobo Shinsha

Embrace the ambiguity in novels and life

Born in Tokyo in 1981, Otani began her career as a video game writer. Her first appearance in the literary world was in 2018 No one said we were perfecta brief collection of stories that explores the relationship between women. Baba Yaga’s Nighther fourth novel published in Japan is the first novel to be translated into English in 2024. The translated works are presented in the 2024 book recommendation list for Tokyo weekend.

Otani is interview Stand with Shueisha Bungei. “Real friends and acquaintances are more diverse and interesting than that…I decided to portray real women in the story.”

Otani also discussed the importance of embracing the grey area with acceptance of her own identity as a writer at the Dagger Awards ceremony in London. “I’m not a mysterious writer. I’ve written all kinds of works,” she statementrefer to Japanese type author segmentation. “Ambiguousness is what defines me as a writer. I believe accepting one’s ambiguity and acknowledging others’ ambiguity will make the world a better place.”

More than 38,000 copies Baba Yaga’s Night As of today, in Japan, the novel is currently for sale in the UK, the US and South Korea and is scheduled to be published in Germany, Italy and Brazil.

The rise of translated Japanese novels

Otani’s work is one of many Japanese novels that have achieved great success in the UK in recent years. According to Nielsen Bookscan, Japanese novels account for 25% of all UK translation sales in 2022. Last November, guardian It is reported that 43% of the top 40 translated novels in the UK so far are Japanese authors.

Although literary giants such as Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami are no strangers to their reputation overseas, the global rise of Japanese writers has continued globally over the past decade. From a female perspective, such as the writer’s title of literary novel Sayaka Murata ((Women in convenience store) and mieko kawakami ((Breasts and eggs) is becoming more and more popular, just like a lifespan comfort novel like Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the coffee turns cold and Michiko Aoyama’s What you are looking for is in the library.

There has also been a huge increase in classic and contemporary crime novels in the UK market in Japan, including Yuzuki’s aforementioned bestseller butter and the Golden Age crime novels, such as Seicho Matsumoto’s Tokyo Express (also known as Points and lines).

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