Biography
One of Japan’s best known and most celebrated authors, Haruki Murakami is an international bestseller, with his works translated into over 50 languages. Famous in Japan since the 1970s, it was the publication of Norwegian Wood in 1987 that propelled him onto the world stage.
The only child of Japanese literature teachers, Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kyoto. Unusually for the time, he grew up reading many European authors such as Franz Kafka, Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut and Jack Kerouac; these Western influences would shape both his life and his writing. He met his soon-to-be-wife Yoko while studying drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, and left before completing his studies to open Peter Cat, a coffee house and jazz bar, after realising that he wasn’t talented enough to play himself.
Haruki didn’t start writing until he was 29 years old. His first novel, Hear The Wind Sing, won first prize in the only literary contest that would accept it. Several more successful, award-winning novels followed, but it was not until 1987, when Norwegian Wood was published, that he became known outside of Japan.
The author of numerous award-winning books and recipient of honorary degrees from Princeton and Yale University (among others), Haruki Murakami is the most widely-read Japanese author of our time. Accessible and relatable, his novels make the mundane magical and force us to question our own perceptions of reality.
