With more than 40 years of writing to choose from, it’s difficult to know where to begin when reading Haruki Murakami. Earlier this year in Japan, he published his 15th novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, though the release date for an English translation has not yet been announced.
While Murakami first gained attention in the English-reading world with the translation of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle in 1997, his writing career began almost two decades earlier with the publication of Hear The Wind Sing and Pinball (1973). These first two novels were not widely available in English until 2015, and consequently, Japanese and English readers have read Murakami in quite different contexts and chronologies.
When he wrote his first works, the bristling Japanese bubble economy had not yet burst and the iron curtain still divided Europe. Whereas when he took English readers by storm in the late 1990s, Japan’s days as the leading economic superpower were long gone, as was the tension of the cold war. Here’s a four-step guide for English readers who wish to read Murakami in “the Japanese way”.
