Banana Yoshimoto

Born Mahoko Yoshimoto in Tokyo, the daughter of the prominent critic and philosopher Takaaki Yoshimoto, she adopted the pen name 'Banana': a deliberately androgynous, cutesy handle picked partly as provocation. Kitchen began as her senior thesis project at Nihon University's art college.

Published in 1988, it became an overnight sensation in Japan, selling over a million copies and setting off what the press called 'Bananamania,' before going on to sell widely abroad in translation. Its blend of grief, food, and found family (a young woman comforted by cooking after her grandmother's death) set the template for the gentler, pop-attuned strain of Japanese fiction that followed.

She has continued writing prolifically since, including Goodbye Tsugumi and N.P., while remaining most identified with the tender, plainspoken debut that made her famous in her twenties.