On 12 August, Haruki Murakami's new novel: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage comes out in the UK. What will it be like? Impatient to get my hands on a copy, I've made predictions about the book in the same way that sports commentators make predictions about games – I've done a statistical analysis of Murakami's novels to date … [Read more...]
Happy birthday Haruki Murakami, and the year so far…
Today is Haruki Murakami's 65th birthday. Happy birthday, sir. I discovered Murakami the same way I discovered Kafka - via MTV. There was an MTV spot called 'An A to Z of Japan', and the letter M was, 'Haruki Murakami, Japan's coolest writer', or something like that. I Googled him and read about his books, and the plots appealed to my love of the … [Read more...]