恋するように旅をして

by Mitsuyo Kakuta, 角田光代, いしい しんじ (Commentator)

こんなに軽々と歩くひとは見たことがない――いしいしんじ(「解説」より)

時間ができたら旅に出る。かばんひとつで、予定も決めずに。タイの長距離バスに乗り、ベトナムではコーヒー屋に通い、モロッコで道に迷い、アイルランドのパブでひとりビールを飲む。地図を読むのは苦手だけれども、旅するほどにその土地に恋していく。直木賞作家のフォト・エッセイ。(『恋愛旅人』を改題)

240 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2005

About the author

Mitsuyo Kakuta (角田光代, 1967–) set her sights on becoming a writer from an early age. Her debut novel—Kōfuku na yūgi (A Blissful Pastime), written while she was a university student—received the Kaien Prize for New Writers in 1990. She has been working continuously as an author ever since, never having had to support herself with a separate job. Three nominations for the Akutagawa Prize serve as a measure of the promise with which she was regarded from early in her career. Then, at the encouragement of an editor, she shifted toward the entertainment end of the literary spectrum, where she garnered a much broader readership with works depicting the lives of women in her generation, from their mid-thirties to forties. After publishing two brilliant novels in 2002, Ekonomikaru paresu (Economical Palace) and Kūchū teien (Hanging Garden), she went on to win the Naoki Prize for the second half of 2004 with Woman on the Other Shore (tr. 2007). Her successes continued with The Eighth Day (tr. 2010), which received the 2007 Chūō Kōron Literary Prize and was made into a televised drama series as well as a movie; the book sold more than a million copies, vaulting her into the ranks of Japan's best-selling authors. In 2012 she added to her list of honors by earning the Shibata Renzaburō Award for her novel Kami no tsuki (Paper Moon), and the Izumi Kyōka Prize for her volume of short stories Kanata no ko (The Children Beyond).

Mitsuyo Kakuta is currently working on translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.
(source: BooksFromJapan.jp)