Japanese · b. 1977
Kanako Nishi is a Japanese novelist born in Tehran, Iran, and raised in Osaka. She made her debut in 2004 with Aozora Peddler and followed it a year later with Sakura, a family novel about grief that sold more than 500,000 copies and was made into a film in 2020. Her other books include Tsuki no Kaerumichi, Fukuwarai and Saraba!, and several have been adapted for the screen. She won the Oda Sakunosuke Prize for Fukuwarai, the Kawai Hayao Literary Prize for Kiiroi Zō, and the Naoki Prize in 2015 for Saraba!. Her fiction is written in plain, direct language and centers on families, outsiders and ordinary people living with loss. She is also known for her work as an illustrator and essayist, and she remains one of the best-known contemporary novelists in Japan.