Haruki Murakami, Award winning author

Share This Article Get Updates by Email Tell a friend

Haruki Murakami is quite possibly the most successful and influential cult author in the world today. The 59-year-old sells millions of books in Japan. His fifth novel, Norwegian Wood, sold more than 3.5m copies in its first year and his work has been translated into 40 languages, in which he sells almost as well. Last year’s novella, After Dark, shifted more than 100,000 copies in English in its first three months. His books are like Japanese food — a mix of the delicate, the deliberately bland and the curiously exotic. Dreams, memory and reality swap places, all leavened with dry humour. His translator, Professor Jay Rubin, says reading Murakami changes your brain. His world-view has inspired Sofia Coppola, the author David Mitchell and American bands such as the Flaming Lips. He is a recipient of the Franz Kafka prize, has honorary degrees from Princeton and Liège, and is tipped for the Nobel prize for literature.

Novelist Haruki Murakami of Japan attends a news conference in Prague October 30, 2006. He was in Prague to receive the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize for his novel Kafka on the Shore.

Murakami travelled to the Czech capital with his wife, Yoko, for the first time to pick up the award, which commemorates the 20th century Bohemian author of Jewish origin whose most famous works include "The Castle," "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial".

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
   
   
   (literature and fiction, classics)
   
   "What's your favorite book?
   
   The Great Gatsby. I translated it a couple of years ago. I wanted to translate it when I was in my 20s, but I wasn't ready."
   
   


2. The Castle by Franz Kafka
   
   
   (literature and fiction, classics)
   
   "I really appreciate this Franz Kafka international literary award, maybe because Franz Kafka is one of my favourite authors of all time," Murakami said after he became the sixth recipient of the prize.
   
   "I encountered Kafka's work when I was 15 years old, the book was 'The Castle'. It was a great big incredible book. It gave me a tremendous shock," Murakami said in his acceptance speech. "

When I read Ray's (Raymond Carver) stories for the first time, I was struck, like lightning strikes,' says Murakami. 'I felt, he's my author, he's my writer. His style is very clear and very honest. That is the style I admire. And he was a beautiful person, so kind and sincere.'

Nobody wrote stories like those. They went beyond common sense. I learned something from Raymond Carver about writing short stories. He always chose a simple vocabulary. He wrote straightforward stories, with a sense of humor, a crispness, and an unpredictable story line and very bleak endings. His stories are about everyday life. What he was saying by writing short stories is that you have to be intellectual when you write, but the subject matter doesn’t have to be intellectual.

I read a lot from the time I was a little kid, and I got so deeply into the worlds of the novels I was reading that it would be a lie if I said I never felt like writing anything. But I never believed I had the talent to write fiction. In my teens I loved writers like Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Balzac, but I never imagined I could write anything that would measure up to the works they left us.

Mr. Murakami's attachment to American literature is longstanding. As a high school student in Kobe, in western Japan, he read, in the original, Kurt Vonnegut, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote and Raymond Chandler.

Practically everything I know about writing, then, I learned from music. It may sound paradoxical to say so, but if I had not been so obsessed with music, I might not have become a novelist. Even now, almost 30 years later, I continue to learn a great deal about writing from good music. My style is as deeply influenced by Charlie Parker’s repeated freewheeling riffs, say, as by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elegantly flowing prose. And I still take the quality of continual self-renewal in Miles Davis’s music as a literary model.

"I was strongly influenced by Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan. They are so lively and fresh."

...On the translation side, I'm presently translating a collection of Grace Paley's short stories. I really like her work. Translating her stories is very difficult, but I always do my very best.

1. The Collected Stories by Grace Paley
   
   
   (literature and fiction)
   
   


2. The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley
   
   
   (literature and fiction)
   
   


3. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley
   
   
   (literature and fiction)
   
   


4. Fidelity: Poems by Grace Paley
   
   
   (literature and fiction)
   
   


5. Begin Again: Collected Poems by Grace Paley
   
   
   (literature and fiction)
   
   

He reads a lot and widely, from Dostoyevsky to Agatha Christie. Raymond Chandler is another favorite. “Philip Marlowe is Chandler’s fantasy but he’s real to me.” When he was younger, he explains, after a turbulent time as a student, “I just wanted to live like Marlowe.”

1. Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
   
   
   (literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)
   
   


2. The High Window by Raymond Chandler
   
   
   (literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)
   
   


3. The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
   
   
   (literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)
   
   


4. The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
   
   
   (literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)
   
   


5. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
   
   
   (literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)
   
   


6. Playback by Raymond Chandler
   
   
   (literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)
   
   


7. Poodle Springs by Raymond Chandler
   
   
   (mystery and thrillers)
   
   


8. Philip Marlowe's Guide to Life by Raymond Chandler
   
   
   (classics, literature and fiction, mystery and thrillers)
   
   


9. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
   
   
   (literature and fiction, classics)
   
   


10. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    
    
    (literature and fiction, classics, mystery and thrillers, romance)
    
    


11. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    
    
    (literature and fiction, classics)
    

..and last but not least, Haruki Murakami's favorite books:

1. The Nuclear Age by Tim O'Brien
   
   
   (literature and fiction)
   
   "I translated The Nuclear Age by Tim O’Brien. And every American I met said that’s his worst book. But I just loved it. I told O’Brien when I met him, and he was so suspicious. He said: “You did? You really did?"
   
   


2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
   
   
   (literature and fiction, classics)
   
   "It's a dark story, very disturbing. I enjoyed it when I was seventeen, so I decided to translate it. I remembered it as being funny, but it's dark and strong. I must have been disturbed, when I was young. J.D. Salinger has a big obsession, three times bigger than mine. That's why I'm here tonight, and he isn't."

Source:
http://www.apublicspace.org
Publishers Weekly" interview
http://www.worldpress.org
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.themillions.com
http://www.bookbrowse.com
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.abc.net.au
http://www.time.com, 10 Questions for Haruki Murakami

Why should you listen to him?

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949. Following the publication of his first novel in Japanese in 1979, he sold the jazz bar he ran with his wife and became a full-time writer. It was with the publication of Norwegian Wood – which has to date sold more than 4 million copies in Japan alone – that the author was truly catapulted into the limelight. Known for his surrealistic world of mysterious (and often disappearing) women, cats, earlobes, wells, Western culture, music and quirky first-person narratives, he is now Japan’s best-known novelist abroad. Nine novels, four short story collections and two works of non-fiction are currently available in English translation.

He is considered by critics as an important figure in postmodern literature and Guardian praised him as "one of the world's greatest living novelists".

MURAKAMI IS HUGELY INFLUENTIAL

As well as countless Japanese novelists, the plot and style of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation were partly inspired by Murakami’s novels. David Mitchell — twice nominated for the Booker prize — owes a huge debt to him after reading him while teaching in Japan. Indeed, the title of his second novel, Number 9 Dream, is a veiled tribute to Norwegian Wood — both were named after Beatles songs. Among others, the Complicite theatre company adapted The Elephant Vanishes in 2003; Robert Wyatt reads from Murakami’s books on Max Richter’s 2006 album Songs from Before; and the Grateful Dead-style jam band Sound Tribe Sector 9 soundtracked a 2007 film version of the story All God’s Children Can Dance.

Novels

• The Trilogy of the Rat: Hear the Wind Sing, 1979, Pinball, A Wild Sheep Chase, 1982
• The Hard-boiled Wonderland and End of the World, 1985
• Norwegian Wood, 1987
• Dance, Dance, Dance (1993)
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994)
• South of the Border, West of the Sun (1999)
• Sputnik Sweetheart (1999)
• Kafka on the Shore (2002)
• After Dark (2004 - English translation by Jay Rubin 2006?)

Non Fiction

• Underground (2000)

Collections

• The Elephant Vanishes (1993)
• After the Quake (2002)
• Vintage Murakami (2004)
• Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006)

Awards

1. Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami
   
   
   (literature and fiction)
   
   "World Fantasy Best Novel winner (2006) : Kafka on the Shore"
   
   

Good to Know

Murakami's first three novels, -- Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball 1973, and A Wild Sheep Chase -- comprise The Trilogy of the Rat.

His most often cited influences are Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan.

Murakami told an interviewer from Publishers Weekly in 1991 that he considers his first two novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973 "weak," and was not eager to have them translated into English. The translations were published, but are not available in the U.S. Third novel A Wild Sheep Chase was "the first book where I could feel a kind of sensation, the joy of telling a story. When you read a good story, you just keep reading. When I write a good story, I just keep writing."

Daniel Handler, aka children's author Lemony Snicket, is a vocal fan of Murakami's who once wrote a review/paean to the author in the Village Voice entitled "I Love Murakami." "Haruki Murakami is our greatest living practitioner of fiction," he wrote. "....The novels aren't afraid to pull tricks usually banned from serious fiction: They are suspenseful, corny, spooky, and hilarious; they're airplane reading, but when you're through you spend the rest of the flight, the rest of the month, rethinking life."

Murakami has taught at Princeton University, where he wrote most of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Tufts University. The twin disasters of a gas attack on the Tokyo subway and the Kobe earthquake in 1995 drew the author back to Japan from the United States.

.