First Love

Winner of the Naoki Prize 2018Designed by Kazuhiro YamadaUpon being arrested for the gruesome murder of her father, all college student Kanna Hijiriyama tells the police is, "It's up to you to find the motive." Amidst the media frenzy about the woman "too beautiful to be a killer," clinical psychologist Yuki Makabe is asked by Kanna's lawyer to counsel the young woman as her trial approaches. Yuki slowly uncovers the dark history behind the relationships in Kanna's life – with her father, her mother, and her "first love" – and discovers shocking inconsistencies in Kanna's defense.Winner of the prestigious Naoki Prize & a Japanese bestseller, First Love is part psychological drama, part legal thriller.°°°“First Love is a novel in which a psychologist attempts to discover the truth behind a violent murder; if you suspect that means there’s a pulpy charm afoot here, you’d be entirely correct. Louise Heal Kawai’s translation of Rio Shimamoto’s novel is taut and tense, and as the truth behind Kanna’s murder of her father slowly emerges, a portrait of a deeply dysfunctional family comes along with it. But the novel doesn’t sacrifice character depth for the sake of cheap thrills, giving First Love an appealing candor” — Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders°°°RIO SHIMAMOTO was born in Tokyo in 1983. In 2001, she won the 44th Gunzo New Writers’ Prize for Silhouette, & in 2003, she won the 25th Noma Literary New Face Prize for Little by Little. In 2015, she received the 21st Shimasei Renai Literature Award for Red & the 159th Naoki Prize for First Love in 2018.LOUISE HEAL KAWAI has also translated The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (Pushkin Vertigo), & Sosuke Natsukawa’s The Cat Who Saved Books (Picador). Upon being arrested for the gruesome murder of her father, all college student Kanna Hijiriyama tells the police is, "It's up to you to find the motive." Amidst the media frenzy about the woman "too beautiful to be a killer," clinical psychologist Yuki Makabe is asked by Kanna's lawyer to counsel the young woman as her trial approaches. Yuki slowly uncovers the dark history behind the relationships in Kanna's life – with her father, her mother, and her "first love" – and discovers shocking inconsistencies in Kanna's defense.Winner of the prestigious Naoki Prize and a Japanese bestseller, First Love is part psychological drama, part legal thriller.