Description: Winner of the Akutagawa Prize, The Hole is by turns reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, David Lynch, and My Neighbor Totoro, but is singularly unsettling
Brief description: Born in Hiroshima in 1983, Hiroko Oyamada won the Shincho Prize for New Writers for The Factory, which was drawn from her experiences working as a temp for an automaker's subsidiary. Her novel The Hole won Akutagawa Prize.
Review Quotes: As Oyamada's slim, beguiling novel unfolds, the eerie atmospherics steadily ascend from unease to maximal uncanny...-- "4Columns"