Sayaka Murata: 'I acted how I thought a cute woman should act - it was horrible' www.theguardian.com

Until recently, Sayaka Murata, who won Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa prize, worked in a convenience store. She had toiled in them for half her life, writing most of her 11 novels and two nonfiction books in her time off. Even after becoming a bestselling author (Konbini Ningen, or Convenience Store Woman, sold 1.4m copies and has been translated into 30 languages), she continued to work behind the counter until the attentions of an obsessive fan forced her to stop. “I was so used to the rhythm of working that I found it hard to hang around all day writing,” she explains.