Haruki Murakami (村上 春樹, Murakami Haruki, born January 12, 1949) is a Japanese writer. His books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country. His work has received numerous awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize.

NOVELS

1979 Hear The Wind Sing
1980 Pinball, 1973
1982 A Wild Sheep Chase
1985 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
1987 Norwegian Wood
1988 Dance, Dance, Dance
1992 South of the Border, West of the Sun
1994 The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
1999 Sputnik Sweetheart
2002 Kafka On The Shore
2004 After Dark
2009 1Q84
2013 Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
2017 Killing Commendatore

(MOST NOTABLE) SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS AND ESSAYS

1993 The Elephant Vanishes
2002 After The Quake
2008 What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
2006 Blind Willow, Sleeping Women
2017 Men Without Women
2021 First Person Singular

Latest book: First Person Singular

Synopsis:

The eight stories in this new book are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball, to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator may or may not be Murakami himself. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides.

Philosophical and mysterious, the stories in First Person Singular all touch beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory. . . all with a signature Murakami twist.

i finished kafka a while ago and just picked up wild sheep chase the other day

glad to have found him really enjoying his stuff so far

definitely one of my favorite authors. I understand some of the critiques about him, especially in regards to female characters, but there's something about his writing style that I find so relaxing and easy to read

he's still dropping heat too and hopefully has many more years of writing left. I thought his last novel, Killing Commendatore was excellent. 1Q84 still his magnum opus imo tho

yuppp so many chapters of kafka felt like so little happened, but i finished with just a better feeling of the whole book/character. i love how much he highlights really mundane ordinary stuff. it really is peaceful reading

i was gonna do 1q84 instead of sheep chase, but the length scared me off a bit lmao. if sheep chase clicks really well with me im def doing that next!

Check out Norwegian wood also

I don’t think his style translates well to the short story format but wouldn’t be surprised if I was in the minority there

i havent read any of his short stories

read his main ones like 5 years ago now but read a wild sheep chase and dance dance dance last month and enjoyed them a lot

so im in

Love love love his shorts so im probably gonna read this one as well

OUT NOW

stuck with another book at the moment so I probably won't get to this until next week, but First Person Singular is out now in all formats. no synchronized reading, but drop your thoughts and reviews in here. use spoiler tags when necessary

murakami is great! definitely gonna check this out sometime in the future

want this, but also wanna wait for the paperback

they got a paperback version listed on amazon but it's £21

Innnnnnnnn, the elephant vanishes is one of my all-time favorite

yeah I'm definitely reading this in the summer on vacation tbh

In

Might read this after i manage to finish infinite jest

this would be my assumption but it’s Murakami so I’ll give it a try

Just copped this from the book store any specific story I should skip straight to or just start from beginning

I gave up on infinite jest once I found about the footnotes will try and get back to it eventually

Finished kafka like two years ago but its still lingering on my mind

Murakami ain't perfect but damn if there isn't a rush to be had reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. What a wild ride.

I also found Norwegian Wood at a really low point when I was feeling lonely and emotionally vulnerable while trying to wean off an SSRI and it was such an emotional purging that I don't want to revisit it. But that's like the quintessential example of finding a book at exactly the right time.

I'm just gonna read it front to back and drop some thoughts in here halfway through

both amazing books

wind up bird is so lynchian its incredible would love to see a film adaptation by Lynch cause if anyone could pull it off its him

Norwegian wood is so beautiful and therapeutic despite being brutal

got my green tea smacked a fat edible its raining outside perfect mood to start murakami vibes

f***ing IN
1Q84 one of my favorite books ever

just finished reading cream that was interesting has got me feeling strange

just finished this last night. thought it was good, and a nice holdover until his next novel, but not as good as his other short story collections I read An Elephant Vanishes and After the Quake

I enjoyed all of the stories but I'd rank them like this:

Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey: already read this but really liked the concept
Carnaval: this will be a controversial one with the depiction of the woman but I liked it a lot and understood where he was coming from
The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection: as a Chicago Bulls fan in the 21st century, this hit home for me talking about supporting a losing team
First Person Singular: liked the idea and the ending a lot
Cream: strong start and a good depiction of that surreal feeling that something's off
With The Beatles: the brother character was interesting
On A Stone Pillow: liked this one too but not my favorite. not a big fan of Murakami's s***scenes
Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova: thought this was just ok.

overall I'd recommend this to a Murakami fan as it does have his trademark relaxing prose with some surreal elements, but it's not his best short story collection and just makes me want to read one of his longer novels