Kaho Nakayama was born in Nagoya, Japan, in 1960. She graduated from Waseda University. Nakayama led a theatrical troupe—acting, writing, and directing—before she made her literary debut in 1993 with The Stoop-Shouldered Prince. In addition to the bestselling Sentimental Education, she has published several novels, including Bones of an Angel, which won the Asahi New Writers’ Literary Award, and To the Abyss of the White Rose, which received the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize.