Iranian novelist wins Japanese award
Tehran Times Culture Desk

TEHRAN -- Iranian author Shirin Nezammafi won the 108th Bungakukai Shinjinsho award, or first-time novelists’ prize, for a novel she wrote in Japanese.

Entitled “Shiroi Kami” (white paper), the novel depicts a romance of a teenage girl living close to the Iraqi border, set against the backdrop of the Iran-Iraq war.

Shirin Nezammafi is the second non-Japanese to win the prestigious Japanese award and she is the first author from a country that does not use Chinese characters to win the Bungakukai Shinjinsho award, which began in 1955.

Chinese novelist Yang Yi, 44, became the first non-Japanese to receive the honor in 2007.

“Shiroi Kami” and commentary on the work will be published in the June issue of “Bungeikai” magazine, which will go on sale May 7.

According to the organizer, the 29-year-old Nezammafi, a native of Tehran who has been living in Japan for about nine years, works for a major electronics manufacturer as a systems engineer and studied at Kobe University’s graduate school of engineering. She currently resides in Osaka Prefecture.

Nezammafi also won the 2006 Literature Award for Foreign Students (Ryugakusei Bungakusho) for her work “Salam”, about Afghani refugees.

The prestigious new author’s award was established in 1955, and famous recipients include current Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, Saburo Shiroyama, and Shuichi Yoshida. Yang, the first person whose mother tongue is not Japanese to win the award, went on to win the 2008 Akutagawa Award for her work “Toki ga Nijimu Asa”.

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