Milena Michiko Flašar

(Austria, 1980) is considered a younger, female Haruki Murakami. She grew up in Austria, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an Austrian father. Her debut novel I Called Him Necktie is a bestseller in Germany and has been translated into seven languages. The novel is about a Japanese phenomenon: young people who shut themselves off from the world, somtimes sitting in a little room for years. Flašar describes how one such boy emerges after a two-year period of isolation and comes to sit in a park across from a salaryman, smartly dressed and holding a packed lunch. They stare at each other for days before falling into conversation about lives full of fear and failure, disappointment and shame. They have almost become friends when one day the wage slave no longer turns up. Flašar studied literary theory, Germanic studies and Romance languages. In 2008 she debuted the short story collection Ich bin (I Am), and in 2010 published the novella Okaasan - Meine unbekannte Mutter (Okaasan: My Unknown Mother).