Haruki Murakami

Most authors don't write simultaneous futuristic thrillers and pastoral fantasies about people with slashed eyes. Most authors don't write about chains of events set off by a missing cat. Most authors don't write about 15 year-old Oedipuses.

Most authors are not Haruki Murakami.

Murakami's works include twelve novels, dozens of short stories, an autobiography, and a non-fiction book of essays and interviews exploring a terrorist attack on Tokyo's subways that occurred in 1995. He achieved literary super-stardom in Japan with the publication of Norwegian Wood, but opinion is very much divided among the Japanese literary community whether he is a genius or a purveyor of somewhat odd popular fiction. His fans say, why not both?

Fiction:

Novels:

• The "Trilogy of the Rat"
  • Hear the Wind Sing
  • Pinball, 1973
  • A Wild Sheep Chase
• Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World
• Norwegian Wood
• Dance Dance Dance
• South of the Border, West of the Sun
• The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
• Sputnik Sweetheart
• Kafka on the Shore
• After Dark
• One Q Eighty Four

Short story collections:

• The Elephant Vanishes
• After the Quake
• Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
• Let's Meet in a Dream (in collaboration with Shigesato Itoi)

Non-Fiction:

• Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Murakami's fiction often concerns dreams, sex, violence, the inexplicable, loneliness, parallel worlds, and cats.

---

His work in general and Murakami himself provide examples of:

• Amnesiac Lover: The narrator imagines that he and his dream girl are actually both examples of this in "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning".
• Author Appeal:
  • Murakami seems bizarrely fixated on ears, for some reason.
  • He's also a huge jazz fan. In a 2007 essay for the New York Times Book Review, he discussed his his prior career as a jazz club proprietor in Tokyo, and the influence and inspiration that his writing has drawn from jazz music.
  • He also loves reading--basically all of his main characters are avid readers.
  • Wells and cats also appear in much of his work.
• Badass Bookworm: The author himself, who is a triathlete and marathon runner (which is the main subject of his memoir).
• Dream Sequence: In almost every book.
• Erotic Dream
• Food Porn
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Just about every protagonist, thanks to Author Appeal.
• Literary Allusion Title: Pinball, 1973's title is an allusion to Kenzaburo Oe's The Silent Cry (Japanese title Football, Man'en 1^[1]).
• Love Hurts
• Magical Realism: And how!
• Mind Screw: In almost every single book.
• Nameless Narrative: A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World.
• No Export for You: Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 have never been published outside of Japan (with the odd exception of Thailand), as Murakami is not anxious for a wider audience to find his earliest work. Translations into English have been published for students of English in Japan, and can be found here and there on the internet..
• Old Shame: Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973.
• Trilogy Creep: Dance Dance Dance to the "Trilogy of the Rat".
• Two Lines, No Waiting: Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World, Kafka on the Shore, One Q Eighty Four.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic

1. ↑ 1860 according to the Gregorian calendar