Author Guide · Japanese Literary Fiction
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For eighteen years, until 2017, Sayaka Murata worked part-time behind the counter of a convenience store in Tokyo, writing in the early morning before her shift. In 2016 she won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s best-known literary award, for Konbini ningen, a short novel about a woman who has worked in a convenience store for eighteen years. As Convenience Store Woman it has sold more than 1.5 million copies in Japan and been translated into more than thirty languages. Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1979, Murata has published sixteen books of fiction in Japanese since 2005; four are available in English, all translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori. This guide covers her 4 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 4 key books · 2016–2015 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Four Sayaka Murata books are available in English: Convenience Store Woman (2018; Japanese 2016), Earthlings (2020; 2018), the story collection Life Ceremony (2022; 2019) and Vanishing World (2025; 2015). Start with Convenience Store Woman, the Akutagawa Prize winner and her best-known book. The other three go further into the same question: who decides what counts as normal.
Where to Start with Sayaka Murata
If you want her best-known book
→ Convenience Store Woman (2016) — a woman who is happiest as a convenience store clerk.
If you want her darkest novel
→ Earthlings (2018) — a girl who believes she comes from another planet.
If you want short, strange stories
→ Life Ceremony (2019) — twelve stories about food, bodies and custom.
If you want a dystopia about family and sex
→ Vanishing World (2015) — a society where children are conceived only by insemination.
4 Sayaka Murata Books in English, in Order
Convenience Store Woman
Published in Japan in 2016 as Konbini ningen and in English in 2018 (Grove Press in the US, Portobello Books in the UK). Keiko Furukura, 36, has worked part-time at the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart for eighteen years and has never had a boyfriend; her family and friends want her to marry or find a proper job. When Shiraha, a new co-worker who is fired for pursuing female staff and customers, needs somewhere to hide, she agrees to an arrangement that lets both of them look normal. It has sold more than 1.5 million copies in Japan.
Earthlings
Published in Japan in 2018 as Chikyū seijin and in English in October 2020. As a child, Natsuki Sasamoto believes she is a magical girl; a stuffed hedgehog, Piyyut, talks to her, and her cousin Yuu tells her he is an alien from the planet Popinpobopia. As an adult she calls Japanese society “the Factory” and lives in a sexless marriage of convenience with Tomoya. The ending, in which the three of them leave society behind, includes cannibalism, and the book deals openly with incest and adolescent sexuality.
Life Ceremony
Twelve stories, published in Japan in 2019 as Seimeishiki and in English in July 2022 (Grove Press; Granta Books in the UK). In the title story, set in a Japan with a shrinking population, mourners eat the dead at their funerals and then look for an insemination partner. In “A First-Rate Material” furniture and wedding rings are made from human remains, and in “Eating the City” a woman forages for wild plants in Tokyo.
Vanishing World
Published in Japan in 2015 as Shōmetsu sekai and in English in April 2025, the fourth to appear in English though the earliest written. Artificial insemination has been the norm since the mid-twentieth century, and Amane learns as a girl that her parents conceived her by having sex. As an adult she and her husband Saku move to Experiment City, where children are raised communally, every adult is a “Mother” to all of them, and men can carry pregnancies in artificial wombs.
In What Order to Read Sayaka Murata
None of Murata’s books continue from one another, so you can read them in any order. This page lists them in the order they appeared in English, from Convenience Store Woman (2018) to Vanishing World (2025); the year shown with each book is the year it was first published in Japan. In Japanese order they run: Vanishing World (2015), Convenience Store Woman (2016), Earthlings (2018) and Life Ceremony (2019).
Convenience Store Woman is the gentlest and shortest, and the easiest way in. Earthlings is the most extreme, so read it once you know her tone. Life Ceremony works well in small doses, and Vanishing World shows the ideas about family and sex that run through all her later books.
A reading path
1. Convenience Store Woman (2016)
2. Life Ceremony (2019)
3. Vanishing World (2015)
4. Earthlings (2018)
Selected Sayaka Murata Books Not Yet in English
Beyond the 4 key books: 12 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Novels in Japanese
6
6 books · 2008–2025
- 2008Mausu“Mouse”
- 2011Hakobune“Ark”
- 2012Tadaima tobiranominated for the Mishima Yukio Prize
- 2012Shiroiro no machi no, sono hone no taiōn nowinner of the Mishima Yukio Prize (2013)
- 2019Kawarimia novel
- 2025World 99her most recent novel
Story collections in Japanese
6
6 books · 2005–2022
- 2005Junyū“Breastfeeding”, her first book; the title story won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers (2003)
- 2009Gin’iro no utawinner of the Noma Literary New Face Prize
- 2010Hoshi ga sū mizunominated for the Mishima Yukio Prize
- 2014Satsujin shussanwinner of a Sense of Gender Award special prize
- 2020Marunouchi mahō shōjo Mirakurīnastories
- 2022Shinkō“Faith”; the title story appeared in English in Granta online
The years · 1979–2025
Quick facts about Sayaka Murata
- Known for
- Short, deadpan novels and stories that question what society calls normal, above all Convenience Store Woman, the Akutagawa Prize winner of 2016.
- 1979
- Born in Inzai, Chiba Prefecture
- 2003
- Gunzo Prize for New Writers
- 2025
- Vanishing World in English
- Born
- 14 August 1979, Inzai, Chiba Prefecture; her father was a judge
- Education
- Tamagawa University, art curation
- Day job
- Part-time convenience store clerk in Tokyo for eighteen years, until 2017
- Lives
- Shinjuku, Tokyo
- Translator
- Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated all four of her books in English
- Japanese prizes
- Gunzo Prize for New Writers (2003), Noma Literary New Face Prize (2009), Mishima Yukio Prize (2013), Akutagawa Prize (2016)
The red mark is 2016: Convenience Store Woman, which won the Akutagawa Prize and made her known outside Japan.
How Sayaka Murata Writes: The Rules of Normal
Murata has said she starts not with a plot but with drawings: she sketches caricatures of her characters and imagines their age, clothes and childhood, often based on people she has watched in cafés. She has also said she never plans her endings in advance. While she worked at the convenience store she wrote from 2 to 6 a.m., worked from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and wrote again over lunch.
Her subject is the pressure to be normal: to marry, to have children, to hold a proper job. Her narrators are outsiders who study the rules from the outside. Keiko in Convenience Store Woman copies the speech and clothes of her co-workers; Natsuki in Earthlings calls society “the Factory”, a machine for producing children; Vanishing World and the title story of Life Ceremony imagine societies in which the rules about sex, birth and death have been rewritten.
The tone is flat and matter-of-fact, which is why critics have called her books both very funny and disturbing. The Guardian called Convenience Store Woman “sublimely weird”. In Earthlings and Life Ceremony the same calm voice describes cannibalism and incest, taboos that run through her Japanese work as well.
Frequently asked questions about Sayaka Murata’s books
How many books has Sayaka Murata written?
Sixteen books of fiction in Japanese, seven story collections and nine novels, from Junyū (2005) to World 99 (2025). Four are available in English, all translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori and all on this page: Convenience Store Woman, Earthlings, Life Ceremony and Vanishing World.
What are Sayaka Murata’s books in order?
In order of English publication: Convenience Store Woman (English 2018; Japanese 2016), Earthlings (2020; 2018), Life Ceremony (2022; 2019) and Vanishing World (2025; 2015). In Japanese order, Vanishing World comes first.
Where should I start with Sayaka Murata?
With Convenience Store Woman. It is short, funny and her least extreme book, and it introduces her main subject, the pressure to live a normal life. Then try Life Ceremony or Vanishing World, and leave Earthlings until you know what to expect.
What is Sayaka Murata’s most famous book?
Convenience Store Woman (2016; in English 2018). It won the Akutagawa Prize, has sold more than 1.5 million copies in Japan and has been translated into more than thirty languages.
Is Convenience Store Woman based on her own life?
Partly. Murata worked part-time in a convenience store in Tokyo for eighteen years, from her student days until 2017, and kept working there for a while after the novel won the Akutagawa Prize. Keiko, the narrator, is fictional.
What is Earthlings about, and is it disturbing?
Natsuki, who as a child believes she is a magical girl, grows up to see society as “the Factory” and escapes it with her cousin Yuu, who says he is from the planet Popinpobopia, and her husband Tomoya. Yes, many readers find it disturbing: it deals with incest and adolescent sexuality, and it ends in cannibalism.
Who translates Sayaka Murata into English?
Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated all four of her books in English, as well as stories such as “A Clean Marriage” for Granta (2014).
Has Convenience Store Woman been adapted?
NHK-FM broadcast a radio drama of it in its FM Theater series on 30 November 2019, with the actress Chiaki Kuriyama as Keiko. There is no film adaptation.
Is Sayaka Murata still alive?
Yes. She was born on 14 August 1979 in Inzai, Chiba Prefecture, and lives in Tokyo. Her most recent book in English is Vanishing World (2025), and her most recent novel in Japanese is World 99 (2025).
Footnotes
- Sayaka Murata — Wikipedia
- Convenience Store Woman — Wikipedia
- Aliens and Alienation: Murata Sayaka — Nippon.com, 2020
- Vanishing World — Grove Atlantic
- Review of Earthlings — Asymptote
- Life Ceremony — Publishers Weekly, 2022
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.
“Without a routine, I’d just be playing endlessly in unreal worlds.”
— Sayaka Murata, interviewed by Nippon.com (2020)
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