quick facts
- DOB//12/01/49
- POB//Kyoto, Japan
- owned a jazz bar with his wife for 7 years
influences
- Raymond Chandler
- Kurt Vannegot
- Franz Kafka
- Shakespeare
- Stephen King
genres
- fiction
- surrealism
- magical realism
- sci-fi
- picaresque
japan literature
- his fiction is criticized by Japan's literary establishment for being 'un-Japanese'
- murakami says "I'm a kind of outcast of the Japanese literary world" and "I'm kind of an ugly duckling. Always the duckling, never the swan." - the guardian 2014
- he was never part of a community of writers; he was a loner & was never fond of groups, schools & literary circles
work & writing style
- his work is frequently surrealistic & melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a "kafkaesque rendition of the recurrent themes of alienation & loneliness" he weaves into his narratives
- 1st person narratives
- unique humour
- comments from main characters as to how strange the story presents itself
- novels have themes & titles that invoke classical music
- some analyses see aspects of shamanism in his writing
- norwegian wood has been called the japanese "catcher in the rye"
his characters
- his characters experience what he experiences as he writes, which could be compared to a movie set where the walls & props are fake
random facts
- he's a fan of crime novels
- has a passion for listening to music, especially jazz and classical music
- once aspired to be a musician but decided to become a writer because he couldn't play instruments well
- began to write fiction at the age of 29
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