Reading Haruki Murakami for the first time, I was surprised by the transparency of his writing. With my ungrounded foundation of beliefs surrounding Japanese literary culture, I had imagined the novel to whisk me away on a journey of ambiguous poetic language, alien proverbs and incredible metaphorical depths. Instead, I quickly realised that Murakami’s first […]
With the U.K. under lockdown for much of 2020, our newfound abundance of time has inspired new heights of introspection among many. What better time, then, to tackle Haruki Murakami’s great metaphysical and introspective mind-bender, Kafka on the Shore? Elegantly diminishing boundaries between reality and dream, waking-life and the subconscious, Murakami holds his ground as […]
In 1978, Murakami was watching a baseball game when American player Dave Hilton came to bat. At the exact moment that Hilton hit a double, Murakami realised that he could write a novel. He began writing Hear the Wind Sing that same night. Before that game, Murakami has said, he was just ‘one of those […]