Miyuki Miyabe (?? ??? Miyabe Miyuki, born December 23, 1960) is a popular contemporary Japanese author active in a number of genres that include science fiction, mystery fiction, historical fiction, social commentary, and juvenile fiction. Her most famous novels in the English-speaking world are Crossfire (???????), published in 1998, and Kasha (??), translated by Alfred Birnbaum as All She Was Worth, published in 1999. Amongst anime fans, her fantasy novel Brave Story is well-regarded; it has notably been adapted into an animated film, an "alternate retelling" manga series, and a series of video games.
Miyabe was born in the K?t? ward of Tokyo, Japan and graduated from Sumidagawa High School. She started writing novels at the age of 23. In 1984, while working at a law office, Miyabe began to take writing classes at a writing school run by the Kodansha publishing company. Her debut work is considered to be her 1987 short story "Warera ga rinjin no hanzai" (????????). She has been a prolific writer, publishing dozens of novels and winning many major literary prizes, including the Yamamoto Sh?gor? Prize in 1993 for Kasha and the Naoki Prize in 1998 for Riy? [The Reason] (??). A Japanese film adaptation of Riyû, directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, was released in 2004 (reviewed by Mark Schilling in The Japan Times (5 January 2005)).
Brave Story, trans. Alexander O. Smith (VIZ Fiction, 2007)
The Devil's Whisper (original title: Majutsu wa sasayaku), trans. Deborah Iwabuchi (Kodansha America, 2007)
The Book of Heroes (original title: Eiyu no sho), trans. Alexander O. Smith (Haikasoru, 2010)
The Sleeping Dragon (original title: Ryuu wa nemuru), trans. Deborah Iwabuchi (Kodansha America, 2010)
Criticism
Amanda C. Seaman, Bodies of Evidence: Women, Society, and Detective Fiction in 1990s Japan (University of Hawai'i Press, 2004), 26—56 (on All She Was Worth)
Idem, "There goes the neighbourhood: community and family in Miyabe Miyuki's Riyû," Japan Forum 16/2 (2004): 271—87
