Hideo Levy

is an American-born Japanese Language author. He was born in California and educated in Taiwan, America, and Japan.

He gained attention in Japan for his work Seijōki no Kikoenai Heya published in 1992, which won the Noma Literary Award for New Writers. He is one of the first Americans to write modern literature in Japanese. For his contributions to the introduction of Japanese literature to foreign readers he was honored with a Japan Foundation Special Prize in 2007.

In 1996 his story Tiananmen was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize.

Biography

Levy was born in 1950 to a Polish-American mother and a Jewish father. His father named him after a friend who was imprisoned in an internment camp during World War II. Levy's father was a diplomat, and the family moved around between Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States. He graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in East Asian studies, and later received his doctorate from the same school for studying Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.

After working as an assistant professor at Princeton, he moved to Stanford University and taught there. He later left and moved to Tokyo.

While at Princteon, Levy studied the Man'yōshū. His English translation of the text won him the National Book Award in 1982.

Works

Novels

• Seijouki no kikoenai heya（Koudansha 1992 / Koudansha Bungei Bunko 2004）<br>Forthcoming in English as A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner...... ...
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