Murakami Corner

Come, bring a cup of coffee and your favorite jazz album and read a Murakami Novel;
there\’s no better way to spend a day.

Haruki Murakami is an international best-selling author. Born in 1949, he did not start writing until he was 33 years old. While attending a baseball game, there came a sensation urging him to write.

Since then, he has written numerous novels and short stories. Winning awards spanning from his first novel Hear the Wind Sing to his recent award, the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca 2022 for his life work, which carries unique views of humanism.

A huge fan of his I want to dedicate this section of the site to explore some of his work and related themes.

Discovering Murakami

I believe I was in grade 10 or 11 when I first read a Murakami Novel. I didn\’t and still don\’t have a good knowledge of Japanese literature. All I had known was Japanese Anime and Manga up to that point.

Bored one day, I was browsing the books in my school library and came across the novel \”Kafka on the Shore\”. I\’ll save describing this novel for another article.
But I will say that after that I was hooked. His novels became like candy to me and I wanted more.

While his works may not aim to be philosophical, they had a profound effect on my life.
Every boy needs a mentor to look up to for wisdom and guidance. Murakami was my mentor.

His views of love, loneliness, isolation, and the human condition left me in awe.
And the stories he writes feel like a well-crafted dream that flows unlike anything I\’ve ever read.

This, of course, was also with the help of skilled translators like Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin to bring these dreams to English speakers.

Recommedations

Here are some novels I would start with, but I may also recommend reading some of his short stories as a better introduction to this work.

Discovering Murakami

Recommedations

Novels

Short Story Collections

Music & Other Media

Videos