North Winds Blow the Leaves From the Trees | Yu Miri | Granta

North Winds Blow the Leaves From the Trees

Yu Miri

Translated by Morgan Giles

‘I liked her quiet regard, the way it gave me a sense of loneliness.’

Yu Miri

Yu Miri is one of Japan’s most critically acclaimed writers. She has published numerous short stories, plays, screenplays and essays as well as novels. In 1997 she won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s top literary honour, for her novella Family Cinema. She debuted in English in 2002 with Gold Rush, a controversial novel about corruption of modern Japan and its youth. Tokyo Ueno Station, her second work in English, takes the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as its backdrop, and is a haunting look at Japan’s most marginalized. It is a finalist for the 2020 National Book Awards. Yu lives in Fukushima, where she runs a bookstore and theatre space, and continues to write.

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Translated by Morgan Giles

Morgan Giles is a translator of Japanese literature and critic. Her translation of Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri (Tilted Axis/Riverhead) won the Translators Association’s First Translation Prize and has been shortlisted for the National Book Awards. She lives in London.

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