He has sometimes been criticised by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese, leading to Murakami's recalling that he was a 'black sheep in the Japanese literary world'. His fiction has polarized literary critics and the reading public. Murakami has also published five short story collections, including his most recently published work, First Person Singular (2020), and non-fiction works including Underground (1997), inspired by personal interviews Murakami conducted with victims of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007), a series of personal essays about his experience as a marathon runner. His official website lists Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Brautigan as key inspirations to his work, while Murakami himself has cited Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy, and Dag Solstad as his favourite currently active writers. His work spans genres including science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction, and has become known for its use of magical realist elements. His notable works include the novels Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95), Kafka on the Shore (2002), and 1Q84 (2009–10), with 1Q84 ranked as the best work of Japan's Heisei era (1989–2019) by the national newspaper Asahi Shimbun 's survey of literary experts. Growing up in Kobe before moving to Tokyo to attend Waseda University, he published his first novel Hear the Wind Sing (1979) after working as the owner of a small jazz bar for seven years.

He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan. 'Wonderful.Haruki Murakami ( 村上春樹, Murakami Haruki, born Janu) is a Japanese writer. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle - one of many which combine to create an elegant and dreamlike masterpiece.

The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down.Īs their parallel odysseys unravel, cats converse with people fish tumble from the sky a ghost-like pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since World War II. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy.

A beautifully packaged hardback edition of Haruki Murakami's mesmerizingly surreal classic, now with a new introduction by the author

Kafka on the shore by haruki murakami