Murakami, Haruki: Kafka on the Shore

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 has translated many novels and short stories by Haruki Murakami and other modern Japanese writers. He is a recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Kafka on the Shore. Other acclaimed translations by Philip Gabriel include Lonely Castle in the Mirror and The Travelling Cat Chronicles