but stirs up all kinds of themes and truths in the allegorical mud through his gentle, almost conversational style Hilary A White, Irish Independent Self-schooled and uncontaminated by writerly edicts, the 68-year-old presents subjects directly on a platter before the reader. It is Murakami at his whimsical, romantic best Financial Times Murakami writes of complex things with his usual beguiling simplicity. 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. 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.
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 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.
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. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the following year. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo.
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