For many years now, Natsuko Imamura had been among the expected winners of the Akutagawa Prize – the same prize which Sayaka Murata was awarded for Convenience Store Woman – so it came as no surprise that when The Woman in the Purple Skirt won in 2019, the novel was immediately noticed by foreign media.
The Woman in a Purple Skirt is a fickle book and difficult to define. Book marketers try to sell it as a thriller, a novel about stalking, or obsession… They also draw parallels between the novel and Murata’s Convenience Store Woman. And perhaps rightfully so since both books focus on rather strange female protagonists, alienated from contemporary society.
The titular woman in purple skirt does not know that she became the center of attention for the woman in yellow cardigan. The woman stalks her, analyzing every move, every change in her behavior, knowing her schedule and habits better than anyone. When both women happen to meet in the same workplace, their dynamics falls into chaos. The woman in purple skirt starts an affair, carefully observed by her hidden admirer…
The short, sometimes eerie story of The Woman in the Purple Skirt points us towards a reflection on how we perceive people around us, especially women. Who do we notice and who do we choose to ignore?
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