Author Guide · Japanese Literary Fiction
Books Written by
Before she wrote fiction, Mieko Kawakami was a singer-songwriter from Osaka who made her major-label debut in 2002 and released three albums. She turned to poems in literary magazines, then to a blog, and a novella that began on that blog, Chichi to ran, won the Akutagawa Prize in January 2008. Twelve years later its rewritten and expanded version, Breasts and Eggs, was named one of Time’s ten best books of 2020, and in 2022 Heaven was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Her books are about bodies, money and class in contemporary Japan, often told by women who have very little of either. This guide covers her five key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 2009–2023 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Mieko Kawakami has five books in English: Heaven (2009), All the Lovers in the Night (2011), Ms Ice Sandwich (2013), Breasts and Eggs (2019) and Sisters in Yellow (2023); the years are the Japanese first editions. Start with Breasts and Eggs, the book that made her name outside Japan. Below: what each one is about, the Japanese-only works and the prizes.
Where to Start with Mieko Kawakami
If you want the book that made her name
→ Breasts and Eggs (2019) — two sisters, a niece and a question about motherhood.
If you want something short and dark
→ Heaven (2009) — two bullied fourteen-year-olds and what suffering means.
If you want a quiet novel about loneliness
→ All the Lovers in the Night (2011) — a proofreader in Tokyo who barely leaves her flat.
If you want a gripping crime story
→ Sisters in Yellow (2023) — four young women, a bar and a fraud in 1990s Tokyo.
5 Mieko Kawakami Books, in Order
Heaven
Her first full-length novel. A fourteen-year-old boy with a lazy eye, whom his classmates call Eyes, is bullied relentlessly at school, until notes from Kojima, a girl who is bullied too, start appearing in his desk. The two build a friendship around the question of whether their suffering has a meaning. It won the Murasaki Shikibu Prize in 2010; the English translation by Sam Bett and David Boyd was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022.
All the Lovers in the Night
Fuyuko Irie, a freelance proofreader in her thirties, lives alone in Tokyo and rarely talks to anyone. Her one connection is Hijiri, an editor at the publisher she works for. She starts drinking before she goes out, and she meets Mitsutsuka, an older man who teaches physics, and they begin meeting to talk about light. The English translation by Sam Bett and David Boyd was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
Ms Ice Sandwich
A short novella narrated by a schoolboy who is fascinated by the woman who sells sandwiches at the supermarket counter, and who names her after her pale blue eyeshadow. Around that fixation sit his grandmother’s illness and a friendship with a classmate. In Japan it later became part of a longer book, Akogare; in English it was published as a slim stand-alone volume translated by Louise Heal Kawai.
Breasts and Eggs
The first part is a complete rewrite of Chichi to ran, her 2008 Akutagawa Prize novella: Natsuko, a struggling writer in Tokyo, hosts her older sister Makiko, who comes from Osaka for a breast-enhancement consultation, and Makiko’s twelve-year-old daughter Midoriko, who has stopped speaking and writes in a notebook instead. The second part, years later, follows Natsuko as she considers having a child alone with donor sperm. Published in Japan as Natsu monogatari, it appeared in English in 2020, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, and was a New York Times Notable Book and one of Time’s ten best books of the year.
Sisters in Yellow
In 2020, Hana, a forty-year-old who works at a deli counter, reads that Kimiko, a woman she lived with as a teenager, has been charged with confining a young woman in her flat. The novel goes back to the late 1990s, when fifteen-year-old Hana, neglected by her mother, moved in with Kimiko, opened a bar called Lemon with her and two other young women, and drifted into fraud. First serialised in the Yomiuri Shimbun, it won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 2024; the English translation by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio was published by Knopf in March 2026.
In What Order to Read Mieko Kawakami
None of her books continues another, so you can read them in any order. The order in which they reached English is not the Japanese one: Breasts and Eggs, translated first among the novels, is in its present form one of her later books, and Heaven and All the Lovers in the Night are earlier.
Most readers start with Breasts and Eggs and then choose by mood: Heaven is the shortest and bleakest, All the Lovers in the Night the quietest, Sisters in Yellow the most plot-driven. Ms Ice Sandwich can be read in an afternoon at any point.
A reading path
1. Breasts and Eggs (2019)
2. Heaven (2009)
3. All the Lovers in the Night (2011)
4. Sisters in Yellow (2023)
5. Ms Ice Sandwich (2013)
Everything Else Mieko Kawakami Published
Beyond the 5 key books: 4 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Japanese-only fiction
3
3 books · 2007–2013
- 2007My Ego Ratio, My Teeth, and the World (Watakushiritsu in ha, mata wa sekai)her debut novella, nominated for the Akutagawa Prize; won the Tsubouchi Shoyo Prize for Young Emerging Writers
- 2008Chichi to ranthe Akutagawa Prize novella, later rewritten as the first part of Breasts and Eggs
- 2013Ai no yume to ka (Dreams of Love, Etc.)short stories; Tanizaki Prize, 2013
Conversations
1
1 book · 2017
- 2017Mimizuku wa tasogare ni tobitatsua book-length interview with Haruki Murakami
The years · 1976–2026
Quick facts about Mieko Kawakami
- Known for
- Mieko Kawakami is known for frank, often funny novels about women’s bodies, poverty and class in contemporary Japan, above all Breasts and Eggs.
- 1976
- Born in Osaka
- 2002
- Major-label debut as a singer-songwriter
- 2008
- Akutagawa Prize for Chichi to ran
- 2019
- Breasts and Eggs
- 2026
- Sisters in Yellow in English
- Born
- 1976, Osaka; she lives in Tokyo
- Before fiction
- Singer-songwriter, major-label debut in 2002, three albums
- Debut
- My Ego Ratio, My Teeth, and the World (2007), a novella
- Japanese prizes
- Akutagawa (2008), Murasaki Shikibu (2010), Tanizaki (2013), Yomiuri (2024)
- International
- Heaven shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, 2022
- Translators
- Sam Bett and David Boyd; Louise Heal Kawai; Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio
The red mark is 2019: Breasts and Eggs (Natsu monogatari), the book that made her name outside Japan.
How Mieko Kawakami Writes: Bodies, Money and Voice
Her first fiction came out of a blog, and the voice shows it. Chichi to ran is written in Osaka dialect in long run-on sentences strung together with commas and almost no paragraph breaks, the way someone talks rather than the way Japanese literary prose was expected to look. That style is what divided the 2008 Akutagawa jury, and the English versions keep its talkative, digressive rhythm.
Her subject is the body treated as a problem of money and class: breast surgery and periods in Breasts and Eggs, donor conception in its second half, the physical cruelty of bullying in Heaven. Poverty is never background. Her narrators count yen, rooms and windows, and in Sisters in Yellow the plot is driven by a teenager hoarding cash because she has no bank account or ID.
She often writes from inside one isolated narrator — a bullied boy, a proofreader who speaks to almost no one, a girl who writes instead of talking — and lets ideas arrive through long conversations, about suffering, light or whether to have a child. Readers who like that mix of plain speech and hard questions often go on to Sayaka Murata and Yoko Ogawa.
Watch
Mieko Kawakami in Conversation with Max Liu
Journalist Max Liu talks with Mieko Kawakami about All the Lovers in the Night at Foyles Charing Cross Road, London, on 1 June 2022, with Kozue Etsuzen interpreting. From the official Foyles channel.
Frequently asked questions about Mieko Kawakami’s books
How many books has Mieko Kawakami written?
Five of her books are available in English, and they are the five on this page: Heaven, All the Lovers in the Night, Ms Ice Sandwich, Breasts and Eggs and Sisters in Yellow. In Japanese she has also published fiction that has not been translated as a book, including her debut novella, Chichi to ran and the story collection Ai no yume to ka, as well as poetry and essays.
What are Mieko Kawakami’s books in order?
By Japanese first edition: Heaven (2009), All the Lovers in the Night (2011), Ms Ice Sandwich (2013), Breasts and Eggs (2019, as Natsu monogatari) and Sisters in Yellow (2023). In English, Breasts and Eggs came out in 2020 and Sisters in Yellow in 2026.
Where should I start with Mieko Kawakami?
With Breasts and Eggs, the novel that introduced her to most English-language readers. If you want something shorter first, Heaven is a compact novel, and Ms Ice Sandwich a novella you can read in one sitting.
What is Mieko Kawakami’s most famous book?
Breasts and Eggs. Its first part, as the novella Chichi to ran, won the Akutagawa Prize in 2008, and the expanded English edition of 2020 was a New York Times Notable Book and one of Time’s ten best books of the year.
Is Breasts and Eggs the same as Chichi to ran?
Not quite. Chichi to ran (2008) is the novella that won the Akutagawa Prize. In 2019 Kawakami published Natsu monogatari, whose first half completely rewrites that novella and whose second half continues the story years later. Breasts and Eggs is the translation of Natsu monogatari; the original novella has not been published in English.
Why was Mieko Kawakami’s Akutagawa Prize controversial?
When Chichi to ran won in January 2008, one of the judges, the novelist and then governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara, criticised the decision in Bungeishunju, calling the book’s style egocentric, self-absorbed rambling that was unpleasant and intolerable.
Has Mieko Kawakami won the International Booker Prize?
No. Heaven, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022. All the Lovers in the Night was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
What is Sisters in Yellow about?
Hana, now forty, reads in 2020 that Kimiko, a woman she lived with as a teenager, has been charged with holding a young woman captive. The novel goes back to the late 1990s, when Hana, Kimiko and two other young women ran a bar called Lemon in Tokyo and turned to fraud. It won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 2024 and appeared in English in March 2026.
Who translates Mieko Kawakami?
Sam Bett and David Boyd translated Breasts and Eggs, Heaven and All the Lovers in the Night; Louise Heal Kawai translated Ms Ice Sandwich; Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio translated Sisters in Yellow.
Is Mieko Kawakami still alive?
Yes. She was born in Osaka in 1976 and lives in Tokyo.
Footnotes
- Chichi to Ran — Wikipedia
- Mieko Kawakami — Words Without Borders
- Mieko Kawakami — BookBrowse
- Mieko Kawakami — The Modern Novel
- Sisters in Yellow — Kirkus Reviews
- Sisters in Yellow — The Boston Globe, 2026
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“If you want to know how poor somebody was growing up, ask them how many windows they had.”
— Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs (2020), the first line, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd
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