Katie Kitamura Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Katie Katamura is a literary fiction author, art critique and journalist best known for her novel “A Separation.” The author was born and grew up in Japan and California though she now spends much of her time between New York and London. As a teenager, she went to Princeton University for her bachelor’s degrees and then got her MRes PhD from University of London. She is currently working at the London Consortium, where she is an Honorary Research Fellow. In her career as a journalist she has written for several publications including Frieze, the New York Times, Wired, and the Guardian. “Japanese for Travellers” her debut novel was first published in 2006. Outside the newsroom, she worked on “The Pervert’s Guide To Cinema” as a creative consultant. The work was a Channel 4 Television commissioned documentary series that featured Slavoj Zizek the psychoanalyst and philosopher.

“The Longshot” which was Katie Kitamura’s debut literary fiction novel was published in 2009. The novel that is in development to be made into a feature film made the finals of the Young Lions Fiction Award by the New York Public Library. Kitamura is heavily involved in the development as a script writer. She has been a Premio von Rezzori finalist for her novel “A Separation.” The novel was on the lists of more than a dozen publications that named it Best Book of the Year. It has also been translated into more than a dozen languages since publication. For her creative endeavors, Katie has won fellowships from Santa Maddalena and the Lannan Foundation. She is currently a part time professor at New York University where she teaches creative writing.

As for her inspiration to become an author, Katie Kitamura believes it came from her love for reading. She had always wanted to write but she always got stuck writing the manuscript in the third person. After a few years of letting her project sit, she revisited it once again and decided to write in the first person and things started happening. Given that she is also a huge fan of travel that also writes for the New York Times travel section, she included that aspect in her novels. Whenever she travels, she is always switching on her brain receptors and it is from these that she gets most of the ideas for her stories. While it does not mean that every piece of fiction she writes has settings or characters from her travels, it definitely provides food for thought. As for why she has never written anything set in America, she believes the sense of being an outsider is what makes her fiction have the punch it needs to. Most of the time she writes about characters that are not of the culture or are newly arrived and are trying to understand and navigate it.

Katie Katamura’s “The Longshot” opens to trainer Riley and his student Cal heading to Mexico for a make or break fight with Rivera the legendary fighter. Cal had been the only fighter that had made Rivera sweat four years ago, but it had been so taxing that he had taken some time off to recharge. But Riley who has been with him for a decade knows that they have a chance to change his life by fighting Rivera. Both their careers depend on it. It is a stirring and brilliant story that follows Riley and Cal in the three fraught days before the huge match as each on his own has his doubts on whether they can win. As the day approaches, the tension builds up till the final minute when you could cut it with a knife. Writing in pared down hypnotic prose, the novel is a fascinating portrait of two men trying to be true to each other and themselves.

“Gone to the Forest” by Katie Katamura is a spell binding and powerful tale of ultimate redemption and unfathomable loss. The story is set in the beautiful colonial country where a farm struggles to survive while the country is on the verge of civil war. It is a beautiful story of political family intertwined with family drama. Tom lost his mother and his father lost a wife a decade past and this is something that had finally brought them closer together though it is under a somewhat strained peace. It does seem as it everything including Tom’s future is wrapped in the relentless and vicious control of his father. But things change when Carine a young woman comes into the loves resulting in an intricate web of affections and intrigue. This ultimately causes heightened tensions between father and son. Soon after, one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the country’s history turns the restive population into open rebels. Tom, Carine and his father have nearly lost all trust in each other as they fight to save their way of life.

Katie Katamura’s “A Separation” is a psychologically taut and mesmerizing tale of a marriage on its death bed due to secrets not told. The faithless husband has come to an agreement with his young wife that it would be better to go their separate ways. As it stands, it is a secret and private matter they have yet to tell anyone about. But as she starts her new single life, she learns that her husband Christopher disappeared while visiting a remote tourist spot in Greece. She has yet to speak of the separation to anyone and hence she decided to head to Greece to try to find him. But she is not so sure she wants to find the man and while traversing the landscape she tries to get to the root for the collapse of their marriage. She soon comes to the conclusion that she does not really know the man she once loved. It is a story of infidelity and intimacy that tells of the gulf that usually divides us from people we love and the stories we invent to sooth our egos. Over the course of the story, the young woman sees how she was on the verge of disaster. She finally realizes that her husband’s unfaithfulness was probably the best thing that ever happened to her.