What You Are Looking for is in the Library

About the Author

Michiko Aoyama was born in 1970 in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. After graduating from university, she worked for two years as a reporter for a Japanese newspaper based in Sydney before moving back to Japan to work as a magazine editor for a publishing company in Tokyo. Her debut novel Cocoa on Thursday won the inaugural Miyazaki Book Award. A later work, The Cat’s Tale Under the Tree, won the Tenryu Literature Prize. Her other works include Kamakura Uzumaki Information Centre, God Is on Duty Now, Monday Matcha Café, My Present, Usual Thursday, In the Moon Forest and Red, Blue and Esquisse. What You Are Looking For is in the Library was shortlisted for the Japan Booksellers’ Award and became a Japanese bestseller. It is being translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in Yokohama, Japan.

Alison Watts has translated The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase and Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa, in addition to novels by Naoki Matayoshi and Riku Onda.