Hiromi Kawakami (1958) is a master of magical, or perhaps rather mythical, realism, and writes narratives where the magical, the mythical, and the everyday are depicted with such ease and straightforwardness that the distinction between them is blurred and ceases to exist. By letting her characters live with a snake that assumes human form as it pleases, or by letting them enlarge, shrink, disappear, she gives her very own interpretation of the human and familial relationships that modern man enters into, questions the traditions and conventions we orient ourselves in relation to and ultimately reflects the rational in the irrational.

Kawakami is one of Japan's greatest writers. Her works have been translated into more than 15 different languages ​​and she has won a large number of awards and was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2010. Previously published in Danish include Sensei's Folder and The Woman by the Sea.

Stepping on a Snake won Japan's most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, in 1996.