Reading List

Authors Like Sayaka Murata

Q: What should I read after Convenience Store Woman?

Hiroko Oyamada’s The Factory for another life shaped by work, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) for a woman who refuses the life expected of her. Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes (1962) is the older Japanese classic of a trapped, ordinary life.

Q: Does Sayaka Murata have a new book?

Vanishing World, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, was published in English in 2025 by Grove Atlantic in the US and Granta in the UK. In Japan she published the novel Sekai 99 (World 99) with Shueisha in 2025; no English edition has been listed yet.

Q: Which Sayaka Murata book should I read first?

Convenience Store Woman, which won the Akutagawa Prize in 2016, is short and the easiest way in. Read Earthlings next only if you are ready for much darker material; it includes sexual abuse, murder and cannibalism.

While she wrote Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata got up at two in the morning, wrote until six, and worked a shift in a convenience store from eight until one. Her narrator, Keiko Furukura, is 36 and has worked part-time at the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart for eighteen years; the store tells her how to smile, what to say and when to restock, and the people around her want to know why she has not married. The novel won the Akutagawa Prize in 2016 and has sold more than 1.5 million copies in Japan. In Earthlings (2018) a girl believes she comes from another planet, and in Vanishing World, published in English in 2025, children are conceived by artificial insemination and married sex is treated as incest. The ten writers below share her method: a deadpan voice, a body under rules, and a society that calls its rituals normal.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Japanese fiction · Conformity and the body · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Sayaka Murata, start with Hiroko Oyamada, whose The Factory (2013) turns a workplace into something absurd and unsettling. Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police (1994) shares her calm voice for terrible rules, and Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs (2019) asks the same questions about women’s bodies and having children, in a realist mode. Further down are the older writers who made the strange feel ordinary, and an American who writes withdrawal from normal life.

10 authors like Sayaka Murata

The rules before Murata

Franz Kafka

Czech, wrote in German · The Metamorphosis (1915), The Trial (1925)

Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 and worked for most of his adult life at a workers’ accident insurance institute. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa wakes up transformed into an insect, and his first worry is that he will be late for work. He died in 1924, and most of his work, including The Trial, was published after his death by his friend Max Brod.

The ancestor of the deadpan absurd that Murata writes: an impossible situation reported in plain, orderly sentences, with the family more concerned about the rules than the person. Gregor’s worry about his job is close kin to Keiko’s devotion to the store.

— Lisanne

Every book by Franz Kafka →

Trapped in an ordinary life

Kōbō Abe

Japanese · The Woman in the Dunes (1962), The Box Man (1973)

Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924, grew up in Mukden in Manchuria, and died in 1993. In The Woman in the Dunes, an amateur insect collector is held in a house at the bottom of a sandpit, where he must shovel sand every night with the woman who lives there. Hiroshi Teshigahara filmed it in 1964.

The Japanese writer who first made social entrapment into a strange, precise fable. Abe’s man fights the sandpit and slowly accepts it; Murata’s women accept their systems from the start, which makes reading the two side by side unsettling.

— Lisanne

Every book by Kōbō Abe →

The ritual everyone accepts

Shirley Jackson

American · “The Lottery” (1948), We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916 and died in 1965. “The Lottery”, published in The New Yorker in 1948, describes a village gathering for an annual ritual that turns out to be a stoning, and drew hundreds of letters from readers. We Have Always Lived in the Castle follows two sisters shut away from a hostile village.

“The Lottery” and Murata’s story “Life Ceremony” work the same way: a community ritual described so calmly that the horror arrives late. Jackson is the American root of Murata’s interest in what a group will do to stay normal.

— Lisanne

Calm voice, terrible rules

Yoko Ogawa

Japanese · The Memory Police (1994), The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003)

Ogawa was born in Okayama in 1962. The Memory Police is set on an island where objects — hats, birds, roses — disappear one by one, and the police remove anyone who still remembers them. Stephen Snyder’s 2019 translation was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020.

Ogawa and Murata both describe an unbearable system in a quiet, polite voice, and both are interested in people who comply. Ogawa is more elegiac, Murata more comic, but they share the effect of a world that seems normal until you notice what is missing.

— Lisanne

Every book by Yoko Ogawa →

Japan, sealed off

Yoko Tawada

Japanese, writes in Japanese and German · Memoirs of a Polar Bear (2011), The Emissary (2014)

Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960 and has lived in Berlin since 2006, writing in both Japanese and German. The Emissary, published in the UK as The Last Children of Tokyo, imagines Japan cut off from the world after a disaster, with the old growing stronger and the children frail. Margaret Mitsutani’s translation won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2018.

The companion for Vanishing World: a near-future Japan where the family and the body have been quietly redesigned. Tawada is more playful with language, but both writers treat a strange society as something its citizens simply live in.

— Lisanne

Every book by Yoko Tawada →

The workplace, made strange

Hiroko Oyamada

Japanese · The Factory (2013), The Hole (2014)

Oyamada was born in Hiroshima in 1983. The Factory follows three new employees at a vast industrial complex whose purpose none of them understands, and draws on her own experience of temporary work. The Hole won the Akutagawa Prize in 2014; both books are translated by David Boyd.

The closest match to Convenience Store Woman: a job that absorbs a life, described from inside with no outrage at all. Oyamada leans further into the uncanny, but the subject is the same, work as the shape a person is given.

— Lisanne

The same questions, in realism

Mieko Kawakami

Japanese · Heaven (2009), Breasts and Eggs (2019)

Kawakami was born in Osaka in 1976. A first version of Breasts and Eggs won the Akutagawa Prize in 2008; the expanded novel, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd in 2020, follows Natsuko, a writer in Tokyo, through her sister’s plan for breast surgery and her own decision about whether to have a child alone by donor. Heaven was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022.

The writer on this list who complicates the rest. Murata turns reproduction into a system to be laughed at; Kawakami takes the wish for a child, and the doubt about it, seriously and slowly. Read her after Vanishing World for the same subject without the satire.

— Lisanne

Every book by Mieko Kawakami →

A body that refuses

Han Kang

South Korean · The Vegetarian (2007), Human Acts (2014)

Han was born in Gwangju in 1970. In The Vegetarian, Yeong-hye stops eating meat after a dream, and her husband and family respond with pressure and then force. Deborah Smith’s translation won the International Booker Prize in 2016, and Han won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024.

Han and Murata both write a woman whose private choice about her own body becomes a public offence. Han is grave where Murata is deadpan, and the family’s reaction is the real subject in both.

— Lisanne

Every book by Han Kang →

Opting out of normal

Ottessa Moshfegh

American · Eileen (2015), My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

Moshfegh was born in Boston in 1981. In My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a young woman in Manhattan in 2000 sets out to sleep for a year with the help of prescription drugs. Eileen was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016.

The American counterpart to Keiko: a woman who will not perform the life expected of her, told in a flat, funny, unapologetic voice. Moshfegh’s narrator withdraws from society where Murata’s plays its rules perfectly, which makes them two answers to one pressure.

— Lisanne

Every book by Ottessa Moshfegh →

People who accept the system

Kazuo Ishiguro

British, born in Nagasaki · The Remains of the Day (1989), Never Let Me Go (2005)

Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in 1954 and moved to England in 1960. Never Let Me Go is narrated by Kathy H., who grew up at a boarding school called Hailsham and slowly reveals what she and her friends were raised for. He won the Booker Prize in 1989 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017.

Ishiguro’s characters, like Murata’s, accept the role they were given and describe it without protest. Read him for the slower, sadder version of the question Murata asks with dark comedy: what makes a person agree to their place?

— Lisanne

Every book by Kazuo Ishiguro →

Where to start if you loved Sayaka Murata

If you loved Convenience Store Woman, read Hiroko Oyamada.

The Factory: three temporary workers inside a job with no visible purpose.

If you loved Vanishing World, read Yoko Tawada.

The Emissary: a sealed-off future Japan where family and body have been redesigned.

If you want the same questions without the satire, read Mieko Kawakami.

Breasts and Eggs: two sisters, bodies, and the decision whether to have a child alone.

If you want the older strangeness, read Kōbō Abe.

The Woman in the Dunes: a man held at the bottom of a sandpit, slowly accepting it.

If you want more Sayaka Murata, read her in English order.

Convenience Store Woman (2018 in English), Earthlings (2020), the stories of Life Ceremony (2022) and Vanishing World (2025), all translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Sayaka Murata

Who writes like Sayaka Murata?

Hiroko Oyamada, Yoko Ogawa and Mieko Kawakami are the closest matches. Oyamada’s The Factory makes a workplace absurd, Ogawa’s The Memory Police describes a cruel system in a calm voice, and Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs takes on women’s bodies and having children.

What should I read after Convenience Store Woman?

Hiroko Oyamada’s The Factory for another life shaped by work, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) for a woman who refuses the life expected of her. Kōbō Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes (1962) is the older Japanese classic of a trapped, ordinary life.

Is Sayaka Murata like Yoko Ogawa?

In tone, yes. Both describe disturbing systems in a quiet, polite voice, and both write people who comply. Ogawa’s The Memory Police is more elegiac; Murata is darker and more comic.

Does Sayaka Murata have a new book?

Vanishing World, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, was published in English in 2025 by Grove Atlantic in the US and Granta in the UK. In Japan she published the novel Sekai 99 (World 99) with Shueisha in 2025; no English edition has been listed yet.

Which Sayaka Murata book should I read first?

Convenience Store Woman, which won the Akutagawa Prize in 2016, is short and the easiest way in. Read Earthlings next only if you are ready for much darker material; it includes sexual abuse, murder and cannibalism.

Is Sayaka Murata like Han Kang?

In subject more than tone. Both write a woman whose choices about her own body provoke her family and society, as in Han’s The Vegetarian (2007). Han is grave and lyrical; Murata is deadpan and often funny.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like Sayaka Murata

10 authors like Sayaka Murata

Franz Kafka

Kōbō Abe

Shirley Jackson

Yoko Ogawa

Yoko Tawada

Hiroko Oyamada

Mieko Kawakami

Han Kang

Ottessa Moshfegh

Kazuo Ishiguro

Where to start if you loved Sayaka Murata

Frequently asked questions about authors like Sayaka Murata

Who writes like Sayaka Murata?

What should I read after Convenience Store Woman?

Is Sayaka Murata like Yoko Ogawa?

Does Sayaka Murata have a new book?

Which Sayaka Murata book should I read first?

Is Sayaka Murata like Han Kang?

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