Lynne Kutsukake

The Canada Council for the Arts honoured a number of performance‚ visual‚ and other artists with its annual CC Awards on Nov. 4.

Toronto author Lynne Kutsukake and Quebec writer Geneviève Blouin were named recipients of $10,000 Canada-Japan Literary Awards‚ administered every two years to recognize titles by Canadian authors that encourage understanding between the two countries. Kutsukake’s debut 2014 novel The Translation of Love (Knopf Canada) focuses on the admiration the Japanese public had for U.S. General Douglas MacArthur during the occupation of Tokyo after the Second World War‚ as inspired by real letters written to the general. Blouin was recognized for her French-language 2015 novel Hanaken: le sang des samouraïs (Éditions du Phoenix)‚ Book 3 in a trilogy about Japanese culture and history.