Murakami Haruki
Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) was born January 12, 1949 in Kyoto, Japan.
He is a writer and translator whose works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim.
He received the Franz Kafka Prize for his novel Kafka on the Shore and is considered by critics an important figure
in postmodern literature. The Guardian praised him as one of the "world's greatest living novelists."
Murakami's fiction is humorous and surreal,
and at the same time digresses on themes of alienation and loneliness. Through his work,
he is able to capture the spiritual emptiness of his generation and generations thereafter as well as explore the negative effects
of Japan's seemingly work-dominated mentality. His writing criticizes the decline in human values and showcases an extreme loss of
connection among people in Japan's society.
Photo © Markus Tedeskino / Ag.Focus
Novels
| JAPAN / TRANSLATED | TITLE (IN ENGLISH) |
| 1979 / 1987 | Hear the Wind Sing |
| 1980 / 1985 | Pinball, 1973 |
| 1982 / 1989 | A Wild Sheep Chase | 1985 / 1991 | Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World |
| 1987 / 2000 | Norwegian Wood |
| 1988 / 1994 | Dance Dance Dance |
| 1992 / 2000 | South of the Border, West of the Sun |
| 1995 / 1997 | The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle |
| 1999 / 2001 | Sputnik Sweetheart |
| 2002 / 2005 | Kafka on the Shore |
| 2004 / 2007 | After Dark |
| 2009 / 2011 | 1Q84 |
| 2013 / 2014 | Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage |
Other
Collections of Murakami's short stories have been published overseas - two of them entitled After the Quake and The Elephant Vanishes. Haruki Murakami has also written several non-fiction works, such as the book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Japanese translations for literary works by Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (to name a few), and social essays for various publications.