Haruki Murakami Biography and latest books by Haruki Murakami

“In dreams you don’t need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don’t exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don’t hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.” Excerpt from Sputnik Sweetheart

Haruki Murakami was born in Kobe, Japan. He grew up in Shukogawa, Ashiya, and Kobe and studied drama at the Waseda University. Both his parents taught Japanese literature. He was influenced by authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Raymond Chandler, and Richard Brautigan. Western culture influenced him and it is very obvious in his writings. The Guardian refers to him as being ‘among the world\'s greatest living novelists’. He has also translated the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, John Irving, and others to Japanese.

Haruki Murakami taught at Princeton University and it was at this time that he wrote the Wind-up Bird Chronicle. He won the Yomiuri Literary Prize for it. Further he is considered a major figure in postmodern literature. A lot of his books carry a backdrop of Western music such as: Norwegian Wood (after the Beatles song), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann), Dance, Dance, Dance (after the Dells song), and South of the Border, West of the Sun (the first half of the title being the title of a song by Nat King Cole). He wrote his first book, Hear the Wind Sing, when he was 29 and wrote its sequel, titled, Pinball.

Murakami’s works define a sense of loss, longing, and magic realism. Sputnik Sweetheart; Dance, Dance, Dance; Norwegian Wood, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World are some of the examples that set a paradigm in the genre of magic realism. Almost all his works have an element of dreamlike quality, the subconscious mind, and the bizarre. Despite this element, each piece of work is unique. Underground is a true account of the Aum Shinrikyo gas attack.