Performing the Author

Abstract

The Japanese-Korean author Yū Miri (born in 1968), still fairly unknown in Germany, belongs to those successful contemporary Japanese authors for whom it is typical to be known and celebrated not only for their texts but also for their excessive media presence. The multimedia staging by the author of her self as the ‘author Yū Miri’ sparks just as much interest in the Japanese public and literary scene as do her literary texts. In her book, published by the Munich-based house Iudicium Verlag, Iwata-Weickgenannt provides not only a comprehensive overview of Yū’s literary works published between the years of 1994 and 2005, but she also thematizes the medial representation of ‘Yū Miri’ in her analyses. In the first section of her book, Iwata-Weickgenannt provides a very good overview of the field out of which Yū’s identity problematic as a Japanese-Korean author arises. The second main section of the book is structured along the three phases of the self-discovery process, or rather the self-creation process, of