About the Author

Haruki Murakami (Author, Introducer)
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine 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, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.

In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, First Person Singular and The City and Its Uncertain Walls Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

Philip Gabriel (Translator)
Philip Gabriel is the author of Mad Wives and Island Dreams- Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature and Spirit Matters- The Transcendent in Modern Japanese Literature and has translated many novels and short stories by Haruki Murakami and other modern writers. He is recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2001) for his translation of Senji Kuroi's Life in the Cul-de-Sac, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.

Reviews

Sputnik Sweetheart has touched me deeper and pushed me further than anything I've read in a long time
*Guardian*

How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration
*Independent on Sunday*

A beautiful novel, as light as a feather, and yet enduringly sad... a captivating book from one of the world's most interesting authors
*Sunday Herald*

Murakami has been compared to everyone from Raymond Carver to Raymond Chandler - which should tell you only one thing: he's unique
*Independent*

Confirms Murakami as a master of his craft... Out of this world
*Time Out*