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is a popular contemporary Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
ese writer
Writer

A writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms....
 and translator. His work has been described by the Virginia Quarterly Review as "easily accessible, yet profoundly complex". His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim, and he is the sixth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize
Franz Kafka Prize

The Franz Kafka Prize is an international literary award presented in honour of Franz Kafka, the German language novelist. The prize was first awarded in 2001 and is co-sponsored by the Franz Kafka Society and the city of Prague, Czech Republic....
 for his novel Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore

is a novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami . Noted author John Updike described it as a "real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender"....
. He is considered by critics as an important figure in postmodern literature and Guardian praised him as "one of the world's greatest living novelists".

kami was born in post-war
Post-war

A post-war period is the interval immediately following the beginning of a war and enduring as long as war does not resume. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum when a war between the same parties resumes at a later date ....
 Japan as part of the baby boomer
Post-World War II baby boom

As is often the case after a major war, the end of World War II brought a baby boom to many countries, notably those in Europe, Asia, North America, and Australasia....
 generation.






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Quotations


As I already explaned, I don't have any form. I'm a conceptual metaphysical object.

Colonel Sanders in Kafka on the Shore

If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.

Norwegian Wood

Mediocrity is like a spot on your shirt, it never comes off.

Dance, Dance, Dance

Numbers arent the important thing...what matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. When you do that, it is always the first time and the last.

The Kidney-shaped Stone that Moves Every Day (translated by Jay Rubin)

Money had no name of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle





Encyclopedia


is a popular contemporary Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
ese writer
Writer

A writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms....
 and translator. His work has been described by the Virginia Quarterly Review as "easily accessible, yet profoundly complex". His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim, and he is the sixth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize
Franz Kafka Prize

The Franz Kafka Prize is an international literary award presented in honour of Franz Kafka, the German language novelist. The prize was first awarded in 2001 and is co-sponsored by the Franz Kafka Society and the city of Prague, Czech Republic....
 for his novel Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore

is a novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami . Noted author John Updike described it as a "real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender"....
. He is considered by critics as an important figure in postmodern literature and Guardian praised him as "one of the world's greatest living novelists".

Biography

Murakami was born in post-war
Post-war

A post-war period is the interval immediately following the beginning of a war and enduring as long as war does not resume. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum when a war between the same parties resumes at a later date ....
 Japan as part of the baby boomer
Post-World War II baby boom

As is often the case after a major war, the end of World War II brought a baby boom to many countries, notably those in Europe, Asia, North America, and Australasia....
 generation. Although he was born in Kyoto
Kyoto

Sorry, no overview for this topic
 in 1949, he spent most of his youth in Kobe
Kobe

is the List of Japanese cities by population in Japan and as the capital city of Hyogo Prefecture and a prominent port city in Japan with a population of about 1.5 million....
. His father was the son of a Buddhist
Buddhism

Buddhism is a family of beliefs and practices considered by most to be a religionand is based on the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as "The Buddha" , who was born in what is today Nepal....
 priest. His mother was the daughter of an Osaka
Osaka

is a Cities of Japan in Japan, located at the mouth of the Yodo River on Osaka Bay, in the Kansai region of the main island of Honshu.Osaka is a City designated by government ordinance under the Local Autonomy Law and the capital city of Osaka Prefecture....
 merchant. Both taught Japanese literature
Japanese literature

Japanese literature spans a period of almost two millennia. Early works were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese....
.

Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers such as Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a prolific and genre-bending American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five , Cat's Cradle , and Breakfast of Champions .He was also known for his Humanism beliefs and being honorary president of the American Humanist Association....
 and Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan

Richard Gary Brautigan was a 20th century American writer. His novels and stories often have to do with black comedy, parody, satire, and Zen Buddhism....
, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers for his Western influences.

Murakami studied behavioral science at Waseda University
Waseda University

, often abbreviated to , is one of the top universities in Japan. Founded in 1882 as Tokyo Senmon Gakko , the institution was renamed "Waseda University" in 1902....
 in Tokyo
Tokyo

, officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan of Japan and located on the eastern side of the main island Honshu. The twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, cover the area that was once the Tokyo City in the eastern part of the prefecture, and total over 8 million people....
, where he established himself as a leading researcher. His first job was in a record store (which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works). Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse
Coffeehouse

A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar , and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria....
 (jazz
Jazz

Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
 bar, in the evening) "Peter Cat" in Kokubunji, Tokyo
Kokubunji, Tokyo

is a cities of Japan in Tokyo, Japan.As of 1 June 2008, the city has an estimated population of 117,335 . The total area is 11.48 km?. The city was founded on November 3, 1964....
 with his wife, Yoko. They ran the bar from 1974 until 1981. Many of his novels have musical themes and titles referring to classical music, for example, the three books comprising The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

is a novel by Haruki Murakami. The first published translation was by Alfred Birnbaum. The American translation and its British adaptation, dubbed the "only official translations" are by Jay Rubin and were first published in 1997 in literature....
: The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini's orchestral overture), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes given as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is one of the most famous Romantic music composers of the 19th century....
), and The Bird-Catcher (a protagonist in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute

The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
). Some of his novels take their titles from songs: Dance, Dance, Dance (after The Dells song, although it is widely thought it was titled after the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys are an American rock band. Formed in 1961, the group gained popularity for its close harmony and lyrics reflecting a California youth culture of cars and surfing....
 tune
Dance, Dance, Dance (song)

"Dance, Dance, Dance" is a song written by Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson and Mike Love for the united states singing group, The Beach Boys. It was released on their 1965 album The Beach Boys Today!....
), Norwegian Wood
Norwegian Wood (novel)

is a 1987 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.The novel is a nostalgia story of loss and sexuality. The story's protagonist and narrator is Toru Watanabe, who looks back on his days as a freshman university student living in Tokyo....
 (after the Beatles
The Beatles

The Beatles were a rock music and pop music band from Liverpool, England that formed in 1960. During their career, the group primarily consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr ....
' song
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

"Norwegian Wood " is a song by The Beatles which first appeared on the 1965 album Rubber Soul. While credited to Lennon/McCartney, it was primarily written by John Lennon, though Paul McCartney contributed to the middle eight section....
) and South of the Border, West of the Sun
South of the Border, West of the Sun

is a short, melancholic novel written by the popular Japan novelist, Haruki Murakami, in 1992 while he was a visiting scholar at the Princeton University in the United States....
 (the first part being the title of a song by Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole

Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an United States musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist....
).

Murakami is a keen marathon runner and triathlete, although he did not start running until the age of 33. On June 23 1996, Murakami completed his first "ultramarathon
Ultramarathon

An ultramarathon is any sporting event involving running longer than the traditional marathon length of .There are two general types of ultramarathon events: those that cover a specified distance, and events that take place during specified time ....
" — a 100 km race around Lake Saroma, Hokkaido, Japan. He discusses his relationship with marathons in his 2008 work, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is a memoir by Haruki Murakami in which he writes about his hobby of long-distance running. Murakami started running in the early 1980s and since then has competed in over twenty marathons and even an ultramarathon....
.

"Trilogy of the Rat"

Murakami wrote his first fiction when he was 29. He said he was suddenly and inexplicably inspired to write his first novel (Hear the Wind Sing, 1979) while watching a baseball game. In 1978, Murakami was in Jingu Stadium
Meiji Jingu Stadium

is a baseball stadium in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. It opened in 1926 and holds 37,933 spectators. Property of the Meiji Shrine, it is the home field of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows professional baseball team....
 watching a game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp when Dave Hilton
Dave Hilton

John David Hilton is a former professional baseball player. He was picked in the 1971 Secondary Draft out of Rice University and played four seasons for the San Diego Padres....
, an American, came to bat. According to an oft-repeated story, in the instant that Hilton hit a double, Murakami suddenly realized he could write a novel. He went home and began writing that night. Murakami worked on it for several months in very brief stretches after working days at the bar (resulting in a fragmented, jumpy text in short chapters). After finishing, he sent his novel to the only literary contest that would accept a work of that length, and won first prize. Even in this first work, many of the basic elements of Murakami's mature writing are in place: Westernized style, idiosyncratic humor, and poignant nostalgia.

His initial success with Hear the Wind Sing
Hear the Wind Sing

is the first novel by Japanese people author, Haruki Murakami; it first appeared in the June 1979 issue of Gunzo, one of the most influential literary magazines in Japan....
 encouraged him to keep writing. A year later he published Pinball, 1973
Pinball, 1973

is a novel published in 1980 in literature by Japanese language author Haruki Murakami. The second book in the "Trilogy of the Rat" series, it is preceded by Hear the Wind Sing and followed by A Wild Sheep Chase , and is the second novel written by Murakami....
, a sequel. In 1982 he published A Wild Sheep Chase
A Wild Sheep Chase

is a novel published in 1982 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. It is the sequel to Pinball, 1973, and is the third book in Murakami's "Trilogy of the Rat"....
, a critical success, which makes original use of fantastic elements and has a uniquely disconnected plot. Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, and A Wild Sheep Chase form the "Trilogy of the Rat" (a sequel, Dance, Dance, Dance, was written later but is not considered part of the series), centered on the same unnamed narrator and his friend, "the Rat". However, the first two novels are unpublished in English translation outside Japan, where an English edition with extensive translation notes was published as part of a series intended for English students. According to Murakami (Publishers Weekly, 1991), he considers his first two novels "weak", and was not eager to have them translated into English. A Wild Sheep Chase was "The first book where I could feel a kind of sensation, the joy of telling a story. When you read a good story, you just keep reading. When I write a good story, I just keep writing."

Wider recognition

In 1985 Murakami wrote Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

is a 1985 in literature novel by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. The English language translation by Alfred Birnbaum was released in 1991. A strange and dreamlike novel, its chapters alternate between two bizarre narratives - the 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland' and 'The End of the World' parts....
, a dreamlike fantasy which takes the magical elements in his work to a new extreme.

Murakami achieved a major breakthrough and national recognition in 1987 with the publication of Norwegian Wood
Norwegian Wood (novel)

is a 1987 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.The novel is a nostalgia story of loss and sexuality. The story's protagonist and narrator is Toru Watanabe, who looks back on his days as a freshman university student living in Tokyo....
, a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality. It sold millions of copies among Japanese youth, making Murakami something of a superstar in his native country. The book was printed in two separate volumes, sold together, so that the number of books sold was actually doubled, creating the million-copy bestseller hype. One book had a green cover, the other a red one.

In 1986, Murakami left Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
, traveled throughout Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
, and settled in the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
. Murakami was a writing fellow at Princeton University
Princeton University

Princeton University is a private university university located in Princeton, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and has the largest per-student Financial endowment in the world....
 in Princeton, New Jersey, and at Tufts University
Tufts University

Tufts University is a private research university in Medford, Massachusetts/Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston, Massachusetts, United States....
 in Medford, Massachusetts
Medford, Massachusetts

Medford is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, in the United States, on the Mystic River, just a few miles north of Boston, Massachusetts....
. During this time he wrote South of the Border, West of the Sun and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

An established novelist

In 1994/1995 he published The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

is a novel by Haruki Murakami. The first published translation was by Alfred Birnbaum. The American translation and its British adaptation, dubbed the "only official translations" are by Jay Rubin and were first published in 1997 in literature....
. This novel fuses his realistic and fantastic tendencies, and contains elements of physical violence. It is also more socially conscious than his previous work, dealing in part with the difficult topic of war crimes in Manchuria
Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a vast geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria either falls entirely within People's Republic of China, or is divided between China and Russia....
 (Manchukuo
Manchukuo

Manchukuo was a puppet state in Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia. The region was the Qing Dynasty's historical homeland, created by former Qing Dynasty officials with help from Imperial Japan in 1932....
). The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is frequently cited by critics as Murakami's best work. It won him the Yomiuri Prize
Yomiuri Prize

The is a prestigious literary award in Japan. The prize was founded in 1948 by the Yomiuri Shinbun Company to help form a "cultural nation". The winner is awarded one million Japanese yen and an ink stone....
, awarded to him by one of his harshest former critics, Kenzaburo Oe
Kenzaburo Oe

is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engage with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism....
, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.

The processing of collective trauma
Psychological trauma

Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event. When that trauma leads to posttraumatic stress disorder, damage may involve physical changes inside the brain and to brain chemistry, which affect the person's ability to cope with Stress ....
 soon took a central position in Murakami's writing, which had until then been more personal in nature. While he was finishing The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
 was shaken by the Kobe earthquake and the Aum Shinrikyo gas attack
Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway

The Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, usually referred to in the Japanese media as the , was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of Aum Shinrikyo on March 20, 1995....
, in the aftermath of which he returned to Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
. He came to terms with these events with his first work of non-fiction, Underground
Underground (stories)

is a book by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami about the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Described as a work of "journalistic literature," it collects a series of separate interviews Murakami conducted with 60 victims of the attacks and 8 members of Aum, descriptions of how the attacks were carried out, and his essay "Blin...
, and the short story collection After the quake
After the quake

is a collection of short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. First published in 2000, it was released in English as after the quake in 2002 ....
. Underground consists largely of interviews of victims of the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system.

English translations of many of his short stories written between 1983 and 1990 have been collected in The Elephant Vanishes
The Elephant Vanishes

The Elephant Vanishes is a collection of short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The stories were written between 1983 and 1990, and the collection's first English publication was in 1993....
. He has also translated many of the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an United States writer of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself....
, Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....
, Truman Capote
Truman Capote

Truman Capote was an United States writer whose short stories, novels, plays, and non-fiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "non-fiction novel"....
, John Irving
John Irving

John Winslow Irving is an United States novelist and Academy Awards-winning screenwriter.Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978....
, and Paul Theroux
Paul Theroux

Paul Edward Theroux is an United States travel writer and novelist, whose best known work is, perhaps, The Great Railway Bazaar , a travelogue about a trip he made by train from Great Britain through Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, through South Asia, then South-East Asia, up through East Asia, as far east as Japan, and then...
, among others, into Japanese.

In 2006, Murakami became the sixth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize
Franz Kafka Prize

The Franz Kafka Prize is an international literary award presented in honour of Franz Kafka, the German language novelist. The prize was first awarded in 2001 and is co-sponsored by the Franz Kafka Society and the city of Prague, Czech Republic....
 from the Czech Republic
Czech Republic

The Czech Republic , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country borders Poland to the northeast, Germany to the west, Austria to the south and Slovakia to the east....
 for his novel Umibe no Kafka (Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore

is a novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami . Noted author John Updike described it as a "real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender"....
). Murakami told reporters, "In a way, reading Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German language-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Austria-Hungary, presently the Czech Republic....
's works served as a starting point for me as a novelist."

In September 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ličge
University of Ličge

The University of Li?ge , in Li?ge , Wallonia, Belgium, is a major public university in the French Community of Belgium. Its official language is French ....
, as well as one from Princeton University
Princeton University

Princeton University is a private university university located in Princeton, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and has the largest per-student Financial endowment in the world....
 in June 2008.

In January 2009 he received the Jerusalem Prize
Jerusalem Prize

The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society is a biennial literary award given to writers whose work has dealt with themes of human freedom, society, politics, and government....
, a biennial literary award given to writers whose work has dealt with themes of human freedom, society, politics, and government. There was protest in Japan and elsewhere against his attending the February award ceremony in Israel (including threats to boycott his work) as a response against Israel's recent massive retaliatory bombings of Hamas, which killed many innocent citizens in Gaza. In his own kind of protest, after apologetically stating that it was generally his nature to do the opposite of what he was told, Murakami chose to attend the ceremony but gave an eloquent pro-peace speech to the gathered Israeli dignitaries.

Recent work

The succinct Sputnik Sweetheart
Sputnik Sweetheart

is a novel by Haruki Murakami, published in Japan in 1999. An English translation by Philip Gabriel was published in 2001....
 was first published in 1999. Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore

is a novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami . Noted author John Updike described it as a "real page-turner, as well as an insistently metaphysical mind-bender"....
 was published in 2002, with the English translation following in 2005. The English version of his latest novel, After Dark
After Dark (novel)

is a novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. It was originally published in 2004....
, was released in May 2007. It was chosen by the New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. In late 2005, Murakami published a collection of short stories titled Tokyo Kitanshu (?????, translates loosely as "Mysteries of Tokyo"). A collection of the English versions of 24 short stories, titled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a collection of short story by Japan author Haruki Murakami.The stories contained in the book were written between 1981 and 2005 and this collection was first published in English language in 2006....
, was published in August 2006. This collection includes both older works from the 1980s as well as some of Murakami's most recent short stories (including all five that appear in Tokyo Kitanshu).

Murakami has recently published an anthology
Anthology

An anthology, literally a "garland" or "collection of flowers", is a collection of literary works, originally of poems. In genre fiction and especially science fiction, anthology is used to categorize collections of shorter works such as short story and short novels, usually collected into a single volume for publication....
 called Birthday Stories, which collects short stories
Short Stories

Short Stories may refer to one of the following.*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , a collection by Liam O'Flaherty*Short Stories *Short Stories , a 1954 collection by O....
 on the theme of birthday
Birthday

Birthday is the name given to the date of the anniversary of the day of a person's birth. People in many cultures celebrate this anniversary. In some languages, the word for birthday literally translates as "anniversary"....
s by Russell Banks
Russell Banks

Russell Banks is an United States of America writer of fiction and poetry....
, Ethan Canin
Ethan Canin

Ethan Andrew Canin is an United States educator, author, and physician. He is a member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.Canin was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan while his parents were vacationing from Iowa City, where his father taught violin at the University of Iowa....
, Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....
, David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was an United States writer of novelist, essays and short story, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California....
, Denis Johnson
Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson is an United States author who is best known for his short story collection Jesus' Son and his novel Tree of Smoke , which won the National Book Award....
, Claire Keegan
Claire Keegan

Claire Keegan is an Ireland short stories writer. She was born in County Wicklow in 1968, the youngest of a large Roman Catholic Church family....
, Andrea Lee
Andrea Lee

Andrea Lee is an author from Yeadon, Philadelphia who has written Sarah Phillips, Russian Journal, Interesting Women: Stories and Lost Hearts in Italy: A Novel....
, Daniel Lyons
Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons is an United States writer. He was a senior editor at Forbes magazine and is now a writer at Newsweek. He has written a book of short stories, The Last Good Man , a novel, Dog Days , and a fictional biography, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody ....
, Lynda Sexson, Paul Theroux
Paul Theroux

Paul Edward Theroux is an United States travel writer and novelist, whose best known work is, perhaps, The Great Railway Bazaar , a travelogue about a trip he made by train from Great Britain through Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, through South Asia, then South-East Asia, up through East Asia, as far east as Japan, and then...
, and William Trevor
William Trevor

Sir William Trevor, Order of the British Empire is an Ireland author and playwright....
, as well as a specially written story by Murakami himself.

A new book of essays titled What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, featuring tales about his experience as a full marathon runner and a triathlete, has been published in Japan, with English translations released in the U.K. and the U.S. This title is a play on that of Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....
's collection of short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is the name of both a 1981 collection of short stories and the title of a story within the collection by the American writer Raymond Carver....
.

Criticism and influence

Murakami's fiction, often criticized by Japan's literary establishment
Japanese literature

Japanese literature spans a period of almost two millennia. Early works were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese....
, is humorous and surreal, and at the same time digresses on themes of alienation
Alienation

Alienation may refer to:*Alienation , the legal transfer of title of ownership to another party*"Alienation", the medical term for splitting apart of the faculties of the mind...
 and loneliness. Through his work, he was able to capture the spiritual
Spirituality

Spirituality, in a narrow sense, concerns itself with matters of the spirit, a concept closely tied to religion and faith, transcendence , or one or more Deity....
 emptiness of his generation and explore the negative effects of Japan's work
Karoshi

, which can be translated quite literally from Japanese language as "death from overwork", is occupational sudden death. Although this category has a significant count, Japan is one of the few countries that reports it in the statistics as a separate category....
-dominated mentality. His writing criticizes the decrease in human values and a loss of connection between people in Japan's society.

Murakami was awarded the 2007 Kiriyama Prize
Kiriyama Prize

The Kiriyama Prize is an international literary award given to books which will encourage greater understanding of and among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia....
 for Fiction for his collection of short stories Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a collection of short story by Japan author Haruki Murakami.The stories contained in the book were written between 1981 and 2005 and this collection was first published in English language in 2006....
 but, according to the Kiriyama Official Website, Murakami "declined to accept the award for reasons of personal principle".

Murakami was mistakenly congratulated for receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" ....
 2006 on the homepage of a city library in his native Ashiya, but this was the library's error.

Films and other adaptations

Murakami's first novel Hear the Wind Sing
Hear the Wind Sing

is the first novel by Japanese people author, Haruki Murakami; it first appeared in the June 1979 issue of Gunzo, one of the most influential literary magazines in Japan....
 (Kaze no uta o kike) was adapted by Japanese director Kazuki Omori
Kazuki Omori

is a Japanese people film director and screenwriter. He has written and/or directed several dozen films, including contributions to the popular Godzilla ....
. The film was released in 1981 and distributed by Art Theatre Guild
Art Theatre Guild

Art Theatre Guild was a film production company in Japan that started in 1961 in film and ran through to the mid 1980s. ATG, as it is abbreviated, released mostly Japanese New Wave films....
.

Naoto Yamakawa directed two short films Attack on the Bakery (released in 1982) and A Girl, She is 100 Percent (released in 1983) , based on Murakami's short stories Attack on the Bakery and On Seeing the 100% Perfect Woman One Beautiful April Morning respectively.

Japanese director Jun Ichikawa has adapted Murakami's short story Tony Takitani
Tony Takitani

Tony Takitani is a 2004 in film Japanese Film directed by Jun Ichikawa, based upon the short story by Haruki Murakami....
 into a 75 minute feature. The film
Tony Takitani

Tony Takitani is a 2004 in film Japanese Film directed by Jun Ichikawa, based upon the short story by Haruki Murakami....
 has played at various film festivals and was released in New York and Los Angeles on July 29 2005. The original short story (as translated by Jay Rubin
Jay Rubin

Jay Rubin is an United States academic and translator. He is most notable for being one of the main translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami....
) is available in the April 15 2002, issue of The New Yorker
The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an United States magazine that publishes reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Starting as a weekly in the mid-1920s, the magazine is now published 47 times per year, with five of these issues covering two-week spans....
, as a stand-alone book published by Cloverfield Press
Cloverfield Press

Cloverfield Press is a small press in Los Angeles, California published by Matthew Greenfield and Laurence Dumortier. Inspired by Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press, Cloverfield Press has produced hand-printed letterpress books of Haruki Murakami's Tony Takitani and Miranda July's The Boy from Lam Kien, among others....
, and part of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a collection of short story by Japan author Haruki Murakami.The stories contained in the book were written between 1981 and 2005 and this collection was first published in English language in 2006....
 by Knopf.

In 1998 the German film Der Eisbaer (Polar Bear), written and directed by Granz Henman, used elements of Murakami's short story The Second Bakery Attack in its three intersecting story lines.

Murakami's work has also been adapted for the stage, in a 2003 play entitled The Elephant Vanishes
The Elephant Vanishes

The Elephant Vanishes is a collection of short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The stories were written between 1983 and 1990, and the collection's first English publication was in 1993....
, co-produced by Britain's Complicite
Complicite

The United Kingdom experimental theatre company Complicite was founded in 1983 by Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden, and Marcello Magni. Its original name, Th??tre de Complicit?, is French language for Theatre of Complicity....
 company and Japan's Setagaya Public Theatre. The production, directed by Simon McBurney
Simon McBurney

Simon Montagu McBurney, OBE is an English actor, writer and director....
, adapted three of Murakami's short stories and received acclaim for its unique blending of multimedia (video, music, and innovative sound design) with actor-driven physical theatre (mime, dance, and even acrobatic wirework). On tour, the play was performed in Japanese, with translating supertitles for European and American audiences.

Two stories from Murakami's book after the quake—Honey Pie and Superfrog Saves Tokyo— have been adapted for the stage and directed by Frank Galati. Entitled after the quake, the play was first performed at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in association with La Jolla Playhouse, and opened October 12 2007 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. In 2008 Galati adapted and directed a theatrical version of Kafka on the Shore also first running at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater from September to November.

On Max Richter
Max Richter (Composer)

Max Richter is a Germany-born composer, now living in the United Kingdom....
's 2006 album Songs from Before, Robert Wyatt
Robert Wyatt

Robert Wyatt is an England musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine. He is married to English painter and songwriter Alfreda Benge....
 reads passages from Murakami's novels.

In 2007, Robert Logevall adapted All God's Children Can Dance into a film, with a specially composed soundtrack by American jam band Sound Tribe Sector 9
Sound Tribe Sector 9

STS9 is an instrumental band known for their live performances. The band?s genre-blending sound is based heavily on instrumental rock and analog-generated sound crossed with elements of funk, jazz, drum and bass, psychedelic rock, and hip hop music....
.

In 2008, Tom Flint adapted On Seeing the 100% Perfect Woman One Beautiful April Morning into a short film. The film was screened at the 2008 CON-CAN Movie Festival
2008 CON-CAN Movie Festival

The 2008 CON-CAN Movie Festival is the 5th online short movie festival hosted by Media Research, Inc. The movie festival began on May 1, 2008 with the 20 movies selected for Group A being uploaded to the website, and is scheduled to conclude in Mid-November with an award ceremony in Tokyo, Japan....
. The film can be viewed, voted, and commented upon as part of the Audience award for the movie festival.

It was announced in July 2008 that French-Vietnamese film-maker Tran Anh Hung
Tran Anh Hung

Tr?n Anh H?ng is a France film director of Vietnamese people ancestry.He was born in Da Nang, Central Vietnam, and emigrated to France when he was 12 following the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975....
 would direct an adaptation of Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood
Norwegian Wood (novel)

is a 1987 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.The novel is a nostalgia story of loss and sexuality. The story's protagonist and narrator is Toru Watanabe, who looks back on his days as a freshman university student living in Tokyo....
. The film will be released in 2010.

Bibliography


Novels


Short stories


Other Work


Translators of Murakami's works

Murakami's works have been translated into many languages. Below is a list of translators according to language (by alphabetical order):
  • Arabic - Saeed Alganmi, Iman Harrz Allah
  • Brazilian
    Brazilian Portuguese

    Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by virtually all the 189 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....
     - Ana Luiza Dantas Borges
  • Bulgarian
    Bulgarian language

    Bulgarian is an Indo-European languages, a member of the Slavic languages linguistic group.Bulgarian demonstrates several linguistic innovations that set it apart from all other Slavic languages except Macedonian language, such as the elimination of grammatical case, the development of a suffixed definite article , the lack of a verb infin...
     - Ljudmil Ljutskanov
  • Catalan
    Catalan language

    Catalan is a Romance languages, the national language and official language of Andorra, and a official language in the Autonomous Communities of Spain of the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencian Community and in the city of Alghero in the Italy List of islands in the Mediterranean of Sardinia....
     - Albert Nolla
  • Chinese
    Chinese language

    Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
     - ???/Lin Shao-hua (China Mainland), ???/Lai Ming-zhu (Taiwan,China), ??/Ye Hui (Hong Kong,China)
  • Croatian
    Croatian language

    Croatian language is a South Slavic languages which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in neighbouring countries where Croats are Indigenous peoples, in Italian region of Molise, and parts of the Croats diaspora....
     - Vojo Šindolic
  • Czech
    Czech language

    Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czech people worldwide....
     - TomᚠJurkovic
  • Danish
    Danish language

    Danish is one of the North Germanic languages , a sub-group of the Germanic languages branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany where it holds the status of minority language....
     - Mette Holm
  • Dutch
    Dutch language

    Dutch is a West Germanic languages spoken by over 22 million people as a first language, and about 5 million people as a second language."1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language speakers of Dutch is very small. Most native...
     - Elbrich Fennema, Jaques Westerhoven, L. van Haute
  • English
    English language

    English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
     - Alfred Birnbaum
    Alfred Birnbaum

    Alfred Birnbaum is one of the major translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.Alfred Birnbaum was born in the U.S....
    , Jay Rubin
    Jay Rubin

    Jay Rubin is an United States academic and translator. He is most notable for being one of the main translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami....
    , Philip Gabriel
    Philip Gabriel

    Philip Gabriel is one of the major translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.J. Philip Gabriel is also the translator of works by Nobel Prize-winner Kenzaburo Oe, such as Somersault, and Senji Kuroi, such as Life in the Cul-De-Sac....
     (USA), Theodore W. Goossen (Canada)
  • Estonian
    Estonian language

    Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various ?migr? communities....
     - Kati Lindström, Kristina Uluots
  • Faroese
    Faroese language

    Faroese , often also spelled Faeroese , is a West Nordic or West Scandinavian language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 12,000 Faroese people in Denmark....
     - Pauli Nielsen
  • French
    French language

    French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
     - Corinne Atlan, Hélčne Morita, Patrick De Vos
  • Galician
    Galician language

    Galician is a language of the Iberian Romance languages branch, spoken in Galicia , an Autonomous communities of Spain located in northwestern Spain, as well as in small bordering zones in the neighbouring autonomous communities of Asturias and Castile and Le?n and in Northern Portugal....
     - Mona Imai, Gabriel Álvarez Martínez
  • German
    German language

    German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
     - Ursula Gräfe, Nora Bierich, Sabine Mangold, Uwe Hohmann
  • Greek
    Greek language

    Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
     - Maria Aggelidou, Thanasis Douvris, Leonidas Karatzas, Juri Kovalenko, Stelios Papazafeiropoulos, Giorgos Voudiklaris
  • Hebrew
    Hebrew language

    Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
     - Einat Cooper, Dr. Michal Daliot-Bul
  • Hungarian
    Hungarian language

    Hungarian is a Uralic languages unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries....
     - Erdos György, Horváth Kriszta, Komáromy Rudolf
  • Icelandic
    Icelandic language

    Icelandic is a North Germanic languages, the language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese language and Norwegian dialects such as Telemark dialect and Sognam?l....
     - Uggi Jónsson
  • Indonesian
    Indonesian language

    Indonesian is the official national language of Indonesia. It is based on a version of Malay language from the Riau islands in western Indonesia, today called Riau Indonesian....
     - Jonjon Johana
  • Italian
    Italian language

    Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
     - Giorgio Amitrano, Antonietta Pastore
  • Korean
    Korean language

    Korean is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China....
     - Kim Choon Mie, Kim Nanjoo
  • Latvian
    Latvian language

    Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. Alternative names include Lettish and Lettisch. There are about 1.5 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad....
     - Inguna Bekere
  • Lithuanian
    Lithuanian language

    Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognised as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad....
     - Milda Dyke, Irena Jomantiene, Jurate Nauronaite, Marius Daškus, Dalia Saukaityte, Ieva Stasiunaite
  • Norwegian
    Norwegian language

    Norwegian is a North Germanic languages language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. It is also spoken as a second language among Norwegian-Americans in the United States of America, especially in the central northern states....
     - Ika Kaminka, Kari and Kjell Risvik
  • Persian
    Persian language

    name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
     - Gita Garakani, Mehdi Ghobarayi, Bozorgmehr Sharafoddin
  • Polish
    Polish language

    Polish , an official language of Poland, has the largest number of speakers of any West Slavic languages. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner through most of Poland, and it has a regular orthography....
     - Anna Zielinska-Elliott
  • Portuguese
    Portuguese language

    Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and Portugal. It is derived from the Latin language spoken by the Romanization Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago....
     - Maria Joăo Lourenço, Leiko Gotoda
  • Romanian
    Romanian language

    Romanian or Daco-Romanian ; self-designation: limba rom?na, ) is a Romance languages spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova....
     - Angela Hondru, Silvia Cercheaza, Andreea Sion, Iuliana Tomescu
  • Russian
    Russian language

    Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe....
     - Dmitry V. Kovalenin, Ivan Sergeevich Logatchev, Sergey Ivanovich Logatchev, Anatoly Lyan
  • Serbian
    Serbian language

    name=Serbian|nativename=|pronunciation=['sr?pski?]|familycolor=Indo-European|map=|states=See below under "Official status", besides that in Croatia and as an immigrant's language spread over Central Europe and Western Europe, as well as Northern America...
     - Nataša Tomic, Divna Tomic
  • Slovak
    Slovak language

    The Slovak language , sometimes incorrectly called ?Slovakian?, is an Indo-European languages that belongs to the West Slavic languages .The Czech and Slovak languages are Mutual intelligibility which means that even after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia Czech may be used in all official proceedings and documents in Slovakia, and vice ver...
     - Lucia Kružlíková
  • Slovenian
    Slovenian language

    Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic languages spoken by approximately 2.4 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia....
     - Nika Cejan, Aleksander Mermal
  • Spanish
    Spanish language

    Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....
     - Lourdes Porta, Junichi Matsuura, Fernando Rodríguez-Izquierdo y Gavala
  • Swedish
    Swedish language

    Swedish is a North Germanic languages language, spoken by around 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the ?land islands....
     - Yukiko Duke, Eiko Duke, Vibeke Emond
  • Thai
    Thai language

    Thai , is the national language and official language language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group....
     - Noppadol Vatsawat, Komsan Nantachit, Tomorn Sukprecha
  • Turkish
    Turkish language

    Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
     - Pinar Polat, Nihal Önol
  • Ukrainian
    Ukrainian language

    Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic languages of the Slavic languages. It is the official language of Ukraine. In some areas of Russia there are dialects, Balachka or Surzhyk, which are the Ukrainianized versions of the Russian language....
     - Ivan Dzjuba, Oleksandr Bibko
  • Vietnamese
    Vietnamese language

    Vietnamese , formerly known under French colonization as Annamese , is the national language and official language language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people , who constitute 86% of Demographics of Vietnam, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the United States....
     - Trinh Lu, Tran Tien Cao Dang, Duong Tuong, Cao Viet Dung, Pham Xuan Nguyen


External links

  • episode of Imagine
    Imagine (TV series)

    Imagine is a wide ranging arts series first broadcast on BBC One in 2003. Hosted and executive produced by Alan Yentob the show is currently airing the 11th series, which is expected to follow the usual format of 4 to 7 episodes, each on a different topic....
    , BBC television arts program presented by Alan Yentob
    Alan Yentob

    Alan Yentob is a United Kingdom television executive. He was born into a Jewish family in London of Iraqi descent, and was educated at The King's School, Ely....
    , shown on BBC One
    BBC One

    BBC One is the primary television channel of the BBC . It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular public television service with a high level of ....


  • Short Stories


Interviews



  • from the magazine A Public Space
    A Public Space

    A Public Space is a quarterly English-language literary magazine based in Brooklyn, New York.The magazine was founded in 2005 by Brigid Hughes, former Executive Editor of The Paris Review....