Murakami, Haruki 1949-

Kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
102 editions published between 2002 and 2010 in 21 languages and held by 2,399 libraries worldwide
This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle-yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.

The wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
96 editions published between 1994 and 2011 in 15 languages and held by 1,960 libraries worldwide
While searching for his missing wife, Japanese lawyer Toru Okada has strange experiences and meets strange characters. A woman wants phone sex, a man describes wartime torture, he finds himself at the bottom of a well. Part detective story, part philosophical meditation.

After dark by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
72 editions published between 2004 and 2010 in 20 languages and held by 1,900 libraries worldwide
Two sisters--Eri, a fashion model sleeping her way to oblivion, and Mari, a young student--form the center of a novel that documents a series of encounters--with a jazz trombonist, the manager of a "love hotel" and her maid staff, and a Chinese prostitute brutalized by a businessman client--in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn.

A wild sheep chase by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
111 editions published between 1982 and 2010 in 19 languages and held by 1,682 libraries worldwide
It begins simply enough: A twenty-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend, and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company's advertisement. What he doesn₂t realize is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our hero from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan, where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself.

Norwegian wood by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
140 editions published between 1987 and 2011 in 26 languages and held by 1,669 libraries worldwide
This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event. Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman."-- Cover.

What I talk about when I talk about running : a memoir by 村上春樹 ( Book )
91 editions published between 2007 and 2011 in 12 languages and held by 1,568 libraries worldwide
In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he'd completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and--even more important--on his writing.--From publisher description.

Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world : a novel by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
70 editions published between 1985 and 2010 in 16 languages and held by 1,448 libraries worldwide
The last surviving victim of an experiment that implanted the subjects' heads with electrodes that decipher coded messages is the unnamed narrator. Half the chapters are set in Tokyo, where the narrator negotiates underground worlds populated by INKlings, dodges opponents of both sides of a raging high-tech infowar, and engages in an affair with a beautiful librarian with a gargantuan appetite. In alternating chapters he tries to reunite with his mind and his shadow, from which he has been severed by the grim, dark "replacement" consciousness implanted in him by a dotty neurophysiologist. Both worlds share the unearthly theme of unicorn skulls that moan and glow.

Blind willow, sleeping woman : twenty-four stories by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
11 editions published between 2006 and 2007 in English and held by 1,399 libraries worldwide
"Following the best-selling triumph of Kafka on the Shore-"daringly original," wrote Steven Moore in The Washington Post Book World, "and compulsively readable"--Comes a collection that generously expresses Murakami's mastery. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining"--P. [2] of cover.

After the quake : stories by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
45 editions published between 2000 and 2010 in 11 languages and held by 1,331 libraries worldwide
A collection of stories inspired by the January 1995 Kobe earthquake and the poison gas subway attacks two months later takes place between the two disasters and follows the experiences of people who found their normal lives undone by surreal events.

South of the border, west of the sun by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
77 editions published between 1992 and 2010 in 21 languages and held by 1,279 libraries worldwide
A Japanese novel on a married businessman who has an affair with the girl of his youth. Hajime's relationship with Shimamoto had always been chaste, now they both make up for it--25 years later. By the author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.