Is a Japanese author, dubbed the ‘female Murakami’. She is the daughter of the Haiku poet and essayist Shigeru Ekuni.
Kaori Ekuni (Tokyo, 1964) is a Japanese writer and one of the most prolific and popular authors in contemporary Japanese literature. Since her debut in 1989, she has published more than two dozen novels as well as numerous short story collections, illustrated children’s books, essays, poetry, and translation volumes. Her work has often intersected with cinema: her early novel Kira Kira Hikaru was adapted into a film in 1992, telling the story of a marriage formed out of social obligation between a woman struggling with alcoholism and a man who is in love with another man; or Reisei to Jōnetsu no Aida (Between Calm and Passion, 1999), co-written with novelist Hitonari Tsuji, became a bestselling love story set between Japan and Italy and was adapted into a film in 2001. Another of her best-known novels, God’s Boat, is a quiet and haunting story about a mother and daughter living an itinerant life while waiting for the return of a man they believe to be their destiny.
Over the course of her career, Ekuni has received many of Japan’s most prestigious literary awards, including the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize, the Naoki Prize, the Chūō Kōron Literary Prize, and the Kawabata Yasunari Prize.