Search for haruki murakami - 11 results found

Getting Lost in Haruki Murakami’s ‘Town of Cats’

Book reviews are not usually my thing, but having recently finished Haruki Murakami’s epic three-volume novel, 1Q84, events conspired which were a little too coincidental to pass over. For those unfamiliar with Murakami’s work, he is one of Japan’s most famous authors whose work is humorous and surreal, often focusing on themes of alienation and loneliness. Many of his novels focus on the mundane lives of ordinary people who are suddenly catapulted into deranged circumstances. Read more

Murakami’s Tokyo: Part 3 — Otherworldly

All this week we’re celebrating the release of the English translation of Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by taking a pilgrimage of our own to some of the places in Tokyo that were instrumental in his literary development and found their way into the pages of his characters lives. Read more

Murakami’s Tokyo: Part 2 — Jazz

All this week we’re celebrating the release of the English translation of Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by taking a pilgrimage of our own to some of the places in Tokyo that were instrumental in his literary development and found their way into the pages of his characters lives. Read more

Murakami’s Tokyo: Part 1 — Beginnings

Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going—people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward.

— After Dark

Haruki Murakami is often described as one of the world’s greatest living novelists and has been compared with the likes of J.D. Salinger (he even translated The Catcher in the Rye into Japanese). His depictions of the loneliness and isolation of modern Japanese life ingratiated him with the country’s youth who often struggle to assert their individuality in the face of societal notions of conformity. Read more