Yōko Tawada
Yōko Tawada
b. 23 March 1960 · From Japan- Books
- 18
- Followers
- 0
About
Yōko Tawada (多和田葉子) is a Japanese writer who has lived in Germany since 1982 and writes in both Japanese and German.
Born in Tokyo in 1960, she read Russian literature at Waseda University, later taking a master's degree in contemporary German literature at the University of Hamburg and a doctorate in German literature at the University of Zurich; she has been based in Berlin since 2006.
Her fiction, poetry, plays and essays turn on language, translation and displacement, and include The Bridegroom Was a Dog, which won the Akutagawa Prize in 1993, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, and The Emissary, which won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2018.
She has also received the Gunzō Prize for New Writers (1991), the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (1996), the Izumi Kyōka Prize (2000), the Tanizaki Prize (2003), the Goethe Medal (2005), the Noma Literary Prize (2011), the Kleist Prize (2016) and Japan's Medal with Purple Ribbon (2020).
Top genres
Fiction Literary Fiction Magical Realism Non-Fiction Essays
Links
Featured works
Series
Authors in the same genres
Frequently asked questions
The Bridegroom Was a Dog (犬婿入り) won the 108th Akutagawa Prize, awarded in 1993. The Emissary (献灯使) won the inaugural National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2018, shared with its translator Margaret Mitsutani. Her other prize-winning books include Kakato o nakushite, which took the Gunzō Prize for New Writers in 1991, Hinagiku no ocha no baai (Izumi Kyōka Prize, 2000), Yōgisha no yakō ressha (Tanizaki Prize, 2003) and Yuki no renshūsei (Noma Literary Prize, 2011), published in English as Memoirs of a Polar Bear.
She writes in both Japanese and German, having moved to Germany in 1982 and published in both languages since the 1980s. Her work reaches English through translators rather than self-translation: Margaret Mitsutani translates her Japanese, including The Emissary, and Susan Bernofsky her German, including Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel.
Separately from the prizes awarded to individual books, Tawada has been honoured for her body of work: the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1996, which recognises German-language writing by authors whose first language is not German; the Goethe Medal in 2005; Germany's Kleist Prize in 2016; and Japan's Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2020.