Sam Bett is a fiction writer and Japanese translator of novels by Osamu Dazai, Akira Otani, Yukio Mishima, and Mieko Kawakami, including books shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. A recipient of the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award from the Japanese government, he is a winner of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize and the CWA Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation.