Nanae Aoyama only turned 24 in January, but already she has won literary prizes for each of the two books she has published.
But she hasn't just won any old literary prizes. Her latest, awarded in January for her second novel, "Hitori Biyori (Being Alone)," was the Akutagawa Prize -- the most prestigious in Japan -- which is named after the great early 20th-century novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
What surprised people most, though, was not that Aoyama was one of the youngest winners of the Akutagawa Prize, but the fact that the selection committee -- including previous Akutagawa winners Ryu Murakami and Shintaro Ishihara -- spoke as one in praising her novel over the four other candidates' submissions. Indeed, Murakami has reportedly lauded Aoyama in particular for her skill in crafting dialogue in her novel that is "just right.''
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