Akira Otani’s "The Night of Baba Yaga,” translated into English by Sam Bett, received the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Award for crime fiction in translation in London on July 3. It’s the first time a Japanese writer has won the translation award since it was established in 2006.
The genre-bending novel takes place in Japan’s 1970s yakuza underworld and centers on two women, Yoriko Shindo, a ruthless martial arts fighter, and “the princess” Shoko, daughter of a mob boss, for whom Yoriko serves as a bodyguard.
"In form and style and content, ‘The Night of Baba Yaga’ is unlike any book I’ve translated, but it’s also eerily familiar, like a myth you overheard before you learned to talk,” Bett tells The Japan Times.
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