Tag: Haruki Murakami

I’m a huge fan of Haruki Murakami’s fiction. However, I don’t really read manga, the Japanese comic book art form/genre. Still, recently I picked up a pair of Murakami manga books (there’s a third one—at least—out there that I now need to find).

One book—I don’t know if there’s a sequence to them—contains four stories. The other, three stories. Previously, I’ve read all of these in narrative form. “Birthday Girl,” “Where I’m Likely to Find It,” and “The Seventh Man” appeared in the collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, while “Super Frog Saves Tokyo” appeared in After the Quake.

In the other collection, “Thailand” was in After the Quake, while “The Second Bakery Attack” was in The Elephant Vanishes. As for “Samsa in Love,” it appears in Men Without Women., which is a strange choice since there’s a woman in that story. Although, how she’s drawn might lead to some confusion. “Samsa in Love” is, after all, an inversion of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”

So, several stories all drawn from various sources. I’ve now read four of of the seven manga tales. Maybe it’s my lack of knowledge of that genre, or graphic novels in general (although I do own a dozen or more graphic novels), but the drawings some across as oddly shaped, distorted almost. There are weird “sound-texts” or words that try to represent non-verbal sounds. Some stories are funny, some meander and go nowhere. I love Murakami’s slow and measured prose, how he makes the normal weird, and the weird normal, but I’m not sure about these manga versions. Is this because I prefer my own inner voice, my own vision of the characters and events? Maybe something to think about. Almost all the other graphic novels I own are original, although there are some based on stories or novels. Perhaps the art matters, as those are drawn, well, better.

Of course, now I’ll need to re-read the stories, just to see what was left out of the manga versions, if anything. And, I have just one unread Murakami book to plow through. I do hope his next novel reaches the heights of previous good books, as his latest was a disappointment.

I can’t remember the first novel of Haruki Murakami that I read. Many years ago, during the time when I ran marathons (2010-2013), my brother gave me a copy of Murakami’s slim non-fiction book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. This book, published in 2007, is one that I have read many times. Back then, I thought of Murakami as a fellow runner, even though he’s run major marathons like Boston and New York, and I will never sniff either one of those events. I knew next to nothing about his fiction career.

However, a year or so after reading his book around running, I bought one of Murakami’s novels (I don’t remember which one, maybe Norwegian Wood, maybe not). I liked it well enough that I bought another, and then another. At some point Murkami became one my favorite writers of all time, and I sought out and read all of his books. I even named a fiction detective in a one of my own attempts of writing fiction after Murakami. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84 remain my favorites. Including the two books mentioned below, I now own 24 of Murakami’s books. When a writer speaks to you in a language (and style) that you understand, it’s amazing how one book becomes 24.

For Christmas 2025 I was given two relatively new Murakami books. One is a collection of essays, Novelist as a Vocation. The other is his most recent novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls. Most of his books I’ve bought in the trade paperback editions. The three exceptions are The City (2024), Killing Commendatore (2018 – which I bought in Norway a couple of years ago), and a fun version of the novella, The Strange Library (2014).

Novelist as a Vocation is a collection of eleven essays on the craft of writing, at least how Murakami sees it. In the course of reading his other books I’ve gleaned a sentence or paragraph that might find a home in one of these essays. Still, I look forward to reading about them in more detail.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is Murakami’s latest work of fiction. Despite trying to avoid reviews and spoilers, I’ve encountered one or two while coming across his name online in mentions about this book. What I know before I read the book is this: it started a while ago as an idea, a fragment, and Murakami didn’t like where it went at the time. Then, at some moment, it made sense to him as a story. Some reviewers aren’t too keen on the book, or part of the book. I’ll reserve my own judgment until I read the book. Murakami’s style and pace isn’t for everyone, but for some reason both speak directly to my soul.

Every year Murakami is mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. Every year his name is passed over. It’s quite likely that he’ll never get this award. Instead, some obscure writer’s name will appear, and so it goes each year. Meanwhile, like the maverick writer that he is, he’ll write whatever’s important to him, critics and awards be damned. Arigatou gozaimasu, Murakami-sama!