Japanese author Keigo Higashino, a prolific writer best known for his numerous hit mystery novels and lauded for his intricate plotting and creativity, has died, his official X account announced Monday. He was 68.
Higashino died from colorectal cancer early Thursday, the account said.
¡°We hereby respectfully express our condolences and inform you of this,¡± a statement said. His funeral was held privately.
Higashino penned 106 books in his lifetime and is best known in the English-speaking world for his novel ¡°The Devotion of Suspect X,¡± which follows a brilliant high school mathematics teacher who architects what he believes to be a perfect crime, only to be challenged by his equally brilliant physicist friend.
He was awarded the prestigious Naoki Prize in 2006 for the title, along with the Honkaku Mystery Awards ¡ª among the large number of awards he received or was nominated for during his lifetime.
Born in 1958, the Osaka native developed a love of mysteries as a child and wrote throughout his life.
His professional career initially saw him work as an engineer for automotive component firm Denso, although he continued to write in his spare time.
In 1985, at age 27, he submitted his unpublished novel ¡°After School¡± to the Edogawa Rampo Prize, which he won. The work was published as his debut novel the same year.
In 2014 he was awarded the Yoshikawa Eiji Literature Prize for ¡°The Final Curtain.¡± His most popular titles were translated into multiple languages and adapted for film and TV.
He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of Japan from 2009 until 2013, but typically avoided the spotlight, preferring his work to speak for itself.
¡°Some writers aim to move their readers, others want to write beautiful sentences. I want readers to be continually surprised by my ideas,¡± he said during a rare interview with The Wall Street Journal in 2011.
By 2023, he had sold more than 100 million books in Japan, according to his publishers.
His novel ¡°Eternal Memory¡± is scheduled for publication next month.
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