PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
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 and Men Without Women, 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.
[The] 11 essays here… deal with all the things that you’d like to ask [Murakami]…in the highly unlikely event that you were able to corner him at a book-signing session… You end this collection of beautiful essays vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again * Guardian *
