小川洋子

小川洋子（日语：小川 洋子／おがわ ようこ，罗马化：Ogawa Yōko，1962年3月30日—）是一位日本小说家，代表作《博士热爱的算式》曾改编为电影。早期笔锋较为冷敛，多描写人性的残酷与阴暗，三十岁后开始有所改变，开始撰写回忆相关的主题，偏向“人类是如此残酷，却也如此伟大”的作品，如《安妮 ‧ 法兰克的记忆》等。

简介

本名本乡洋子，冈山县冈山市出生，冈山县立冈山朝日高中、早稻田大学第一文学院文艺系毕业，目前住在兵库县芦屋市。已婚并有小孩。

早期作品多以人性的阴暗面为主题，后文风转变。曾经前往德国奥兹维斯集中营采访，此行影响了其写作风格。

小川洋子以《秘密结晶》入围了2020年国际布克奖、2020年世界奇幻奖决选，入围2019年美国国家图书奖。

得奖经历

1988年 - 〈毁灭黄粉蝶的时候〉获得海燕新人文学奖

1991年 - 〈怀孕日记〉获得芥川奖

2004年 - 《博士热爱的算式》获得读卖文学奖、书店大奖

2004年 - 《婆罗门的埋葬》获得泉镜花文学奖

2006年 - 《米娜的行进》获得谷崎润一郎奖

2012年 - 《小鸟》获得艺术选奖文部科学大臣奖

2013年 - 早稻田大学坪内逍遥大奖

Yōko Ogawa (小川 洋子, Ogawa Yōko; born March 30, 1962) is a Japanese writer. Her work has won every major Japanese literary award, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Yomiuri Prize. Internationally, she has been the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and the American Book Award. The Memory Police was also shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020.

Some of her most well known works include The Memory Police, The Housekeeper and the Professor, The Diving Pool and Hotel Iris.

Background and education

Ogawa was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture. Growing up in a family that followed the Konkōkyō religion, she was influenced by her upbringing in a household with deep religious and educational values. She graduated with a degree in literature from Waseda University, Tokyo. When she married her husband, a steel company engineer, she quit her job as a medical university secretary and wrote while her husband was at work. Initially, she wrote only as a hobby, and her husband didn't realise she was a writer until her debut novel, The Breaking of the Butterfly, received a literary prize. Her novella Pregnancy Diary, written in brief intervals when her son was a toddler, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for literature, thus cementing her reputation in Japan.

She currently lives in Ashiya, Japan.

Career

Since 1988, Ogawa has published more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction. Much of her work has yet to be translated into English. In 2006, she worked alongside the mathematician Masahiko Fujiwara to co-write "An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics", a dialogue on the extraordinary beauty of numbers.

Her work has been published in the New Yorker, A Public Space and Zoetrope.

The 2005 French film L'Annulaire (The Ringfinger) was based in part on Ogawa's Kusuriyubi no hyōhon. Her novel The Housekeeper and the Professor was adapted into the movie The Professor's Beloved Equation. In partnership with Amazon studios, Reed Morano and Charlie Kaufman are set to adapt The Memory Police.

Themes and influences

Kenzaburō Ōe has said, "Yoko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating." Her English translator, Stephen Snyder, has said that "There is a naturalness to what she writes so it never feels forced...Her narrative seems to be flowing from a source that’s hard to identify."

Frequently, she explores the theme of memory in her works. For instance, The Housekeeper and the Professor follows a mathematics professor who cannot remember anything for longer than eighty minutes, and The Memory Police is about a group of islanders who gradually forget the existence of certain things, such as birds or flowers. Human cruelty features as another prominent theme in her work, as she is interested in exploring what drives people to commit acts of physical or emotional violence. She often writes about female bodies and the woman's role in a family, which has led many to label her as a feminist writer. Ogawa is hesitant about this label, stating instead that she "just peeked into [the world of her characters] and took notes from what they were doing".

The Diary of Anne Frank has been a significant source of inspiration to her throughout her career. She first encountered the diary as a teenager, and was inspired to start a diary of her own, writing back to Anne as though they were friends. She notes how "Anne’s heart and mind were so rich," and that "her diary proved that people can grow even in such a confined situation. And writing could give people freedom." Given its themes of persecution and confinement, The Memory Police in particular is a response to Anne's diary and the Holocaust in general.