Minae Mizumura is a novelist who challenges the conventional boundaries of national literature. Though educated in the United States and initially writing in English, she chose to compose in Japanese, demonstrating a profound commitment to the language and its literary tradition. Her novels are acclaimed for being both highly readable and historically resonant, often incorporating formalistic innovations like unique printing formats and interspersed English texts or illustrations. Mizumura also engages in essay and literary criticism, notably analyzing the decline of Japanese under English influence and advocating for the preservation of Japan's great modern literary heritage.
Minae Mizumura's An I-Novel is a semi-autobiographical work that takes place over the course of a single day in the 1980s. This formally daring novel radically broke with Japanese literary tradition and offers a luminous meditation on how a person becomes a writer.