Almost Nothing, Yet Everything: A Book about Water - Hardcover

by Hiroshi Osada (Author), Ryoji Arai (Illustrator), David Boyd (Translator)

Author Biography

Hiroshi Osada debuted as a poet with This Journey. In 2000, his first collaboration with Ryōji Arai, A Forest Picture Book, earned the Kōdansha Publishing Culture Award for Children's Literature.

Ryōji Arai was born in Yamagata, Japan, in 1956. He has an illustrative style all of his own: bold, mischievous and unpredictable. Arai studied art at Nippon University. His art is at once genuine and truly poetic, encouraging children to paint and to tell their own stories. He took the Japanese picture-book world by storm in the 1990s. Since then, he has one multiple awards, including the international Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2005.

David Boyd teaches translation at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies. He won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 2018 for Slow Boat by Hideo Furukawa, in 2022 for The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada, and in 2024 for Takaoka's Travels by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa.