The latest bewitching, kaleidoscopic novel from master storyteller Haruki Murakami, author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and 1Q84
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown
Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him
suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the
Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following
year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled
Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood,
published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a
phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many
languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to
Murakami's unique and addictive fictional universe.
Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a
day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance
running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and
races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records
and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I
Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and
they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing
quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of
imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,
1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious
and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant
readers, ensuring Murakami's place as one of the world's most
acclaimed and well-loved writers.
It’s safe to say that there’s no one like Murakami
*Literary Review*
Murakami’s reality has many sides; some plain, some fancy.
Translators Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen capture every colour on
this mind-altering palette. No other author mixes domestic,
fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching
shades. Murakami’s “Land of Metaphor” remains a country where
wonders never cease
*Financial Times*
Wild, thrilling. . . Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows
how to keep us hooked
*Sunday Times*
Exhilarating. . . . Only in the calm madness of his magical realism
can Murakami truly capture one of his obsessions, the usually
ineffable yearning that drives a person to make art
*Washington Post*
Expansive and intricate . . . touches on many of the themes
familiar in Mr. Murakami’s novels: the mystery of romantic love,
the weight of history, the transcendence of art, the search for
elusive things just outside our grasp
*New York Times*
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