Posts Tagged ‘Spinning Tropics’

Spinning Tropics: First Winner of the Knopf Kodansha Prize

December 8th, 2009

Established in 2007, the Knopf/Kodansha Prize celebrates the work of a previously unpublished Japanese author. The Prize includes publication in English as a Vintage paperback original. Just out this month in paperback, this incredible novel about two women caught up in a difficult love story will be perfect for someone who’s interested in a lush and evocative story.

Aska Mochizuki was born in Tokyo in 1973. In 1992, after graduating from high school, she found employment at a computer company. But she left the corporate world in 1994 to travel around Australia by bus, taking on a series of part-time jobs (as a shark fisherman’s helper and a cleaning woman at a backpacker’s hostel, to name a few.) She returned home and attended university, graduating in 2002 with a teaching certificate. She embarked immediately to Vietnam, to teach Japanese, and returned home to Tokyo in 2004, where she began to write.

To learn more about Spinning Tropics click here.
To read an excerpt click here.