The International Library

The International Library: Mieko Kawakami on Sisters in Yellow with Hitomi Yoshio

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Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT November 11, 2026

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

We’re thrilled to welcome celebrated author Mieko Kawakami (All the Lovers in the Night, Breasts and Eggs) and translator Hitomi Yoshio to The Center this fall to launch the English edition of Sisters in Yellow, as part of Kawakami’s first-ever North American tour.

Set in the narrow alleys of Sangenjaya, Sisters in Yellow follows Hana, a 15-year-old girl living in a tiny apartment with her young mother. Amid the gritty chaos of 1990s Tokyo, Hana and her older friend Kimiko open a bar that becomes a haven, giving Hana the unlikely friends, work, and money she always dreamed of. But as she descends further into the city’s nightlife, Hana’s hope, optimism, and drive are pushed to the limit.

Translated by Laurel Taylor and Yoshio, Kawakami’s daring novel probes the complexities of trust, friendship, and optimism in the face of betrayal. All tickets include a signed copy of Sisters in Yellow. In-person tickets guarantee a seat, and Kawakami will sign books after the event.

Pricing inclusive of sales tax if applicable.

About The International Library

This event is part of The International Library, a collaboration between The Center for Fiction and The Center for the Art of Translation. Join us for a series of conversations across time, place, language, and culture, with live audiences in San Francisco and Brooklyn, with more locations to come. This series will guide readers to think critically about how stories are told and explore the inspiration, philosophy, and craft of international storytellers.

Featuring

Mieko Kawakami

Mieko Kawakami

Mieko Kawakami is the acclaimed author of the internationally best-selling novel Breasts and Eggs, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of Time’s Best 10 Books of 2020. Her other novels, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, include Heaven, shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, and All the Lovers in the Night, a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. In 2024, Sisters in Yellow, which was translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio, won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Kawakami’s books, translated into over forty languages, are known for their insights into the female body, and philosophical questions surrounding gender, class, and ethics in modern society. Born in Osaka, Kawakami lives in Tokyo, Japan.

Photo Credit: Reiko Toyama
Hitomi Yoshio

Hitomi Yoshio

Hitomi Yoshio is the translator of Natsuko Imamura’s This Is Amiko, Do You Copy? (Pushkin Press) and co-translator of Mieko Kawakami’s Ashes of Spring (Amazon Audible) and Sisters in Yellow (Knopf). Her short story translations have appeared in Granta, the Atlantic, Freeman’s, Words without Borders, Monkey, World Literature Today, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, and The Penguin Book of the International Short Story. She received her PhD in Japanese literature from Columbia University, and is professor of Global Japanese Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo.

Photo Credit: Hitomi Yoshio

Featured Book

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Sisters in Yellow

By Mieko Kawakami

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Translated by Laurel Taylor & Hitomi Yoshio

PURCHASE

Hana has nothing—she’s fifteen years old and living in a tiny apartment in a suburb of Tokyo with her young mother, a hostess at a local dive bar. They have no money, no security. Then Kimiko appears.

Kimiko is older, a bright light in Hana’s dark world. Together they set up Lemon, a bar that, despite its shabby setting and seedy clientele, becomes a haven for Hana. Suddenly Hana has a job she loves, friends to share her days with, and the glittering promise of money. She feels like a normal girl. She feels invincible.

But in the narrow alleys of Sangenjaya, nothing is as it seems. Soon all of Hana’s hope, her optimism, and her drive will be pushed to the limit . . .

A story of enduring friendship and deep betrayal, Sisters in Yellow is a masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties that confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation.

About this series