Natsuo Kirino, born 1951, quickly established a reputation in Japan as one of a rare breed of crime writer whose work goes well beyond the conventional crime novel. This fact has been demonstrated by her winning not only Japan's top mystery award, for Out, but one of its major literary awards, the Naoki Prize for Soft Cheeks. Several of her books ...
Her novel Out was translated into English by Stephen Snyder, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who is well known for his excellent translations of contemporary Japanese fiction, among them Ryu Murakami's 'Coin Locker Babies' and Miri Yu's 'Gold Rush'.