A dazzling new collection of short stories from the international phenomenon, Haruki Murakami
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in
downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to
him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear
the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the
following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was
Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a
writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were
translated into many languages, including English, and the door was
thrown wide open to Murakami's unique and addictive fictional
universe.
Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a
day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance
running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and
races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records
and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I
Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and
they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing
quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of
imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,
1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious
and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant
readers, ensuring Murakami's place as one of the world's most
acclaimed and well-loved writers.
"Supremely enjoyable, philosophical and pitch-perfect new
collection of short stories. . . Murakami has a marvellous
understanding of youth and age - and the failings of each" *
Observer *
"Murakami writes of complex things with his usual beguiling
simplicity. . . Strangely invigorating to read. . . It is Murakami
at his whimsical, romantic best" * Financial Times *
"Calculatedly provocative. . ., the stories offer sweet-sour
meditations on human solitude and a yearning to connect. . .
Murakami, always inventive, is one of the finest popular writers at
work today" -- Ian Thomson * Evening Standard *
"Written with all the cats, spaghetti, humor, and gentle surrealism
we might expect . . . Men Without Women is a funny, lovely,
unmistakably Murakami collection of seven stories about the lives
of people trying to find their place in the world and reckoning
with their pasts" * Buzzfeed *
"A disconcertingly funny portrait of modern loneliness" -- Hayley
Maitland * Vogue *
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