Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been best-sellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the World Fantasy Award, the Tanizaki Prize, Yomiuri Prize for Literature, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Noma Literary Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction, the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, and the Princess of Asturias Awards. Growing up in Ashiya, near Kobe before moving to Tokyo to attend Waseda University, he published his first novel Hear the Wind Sing (1979) after working as the owner of a small jazz bar for seven years. His notable works include the novels Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95), Kafka on the Shore (2002) and 1Q84 (2009–10); the last was ranked as the best work of Japan's Heisei era (1989–2019) by the national newspaper Asahi Shimbun's survey of literary experts. His work spans genres including science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction, and has become known for his use of magical realist elements. His official website cites Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan as key inspirations to his work, while Murakami himself has named Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy and Dag Solstad as his favourite currently active writers. Murakami has also published five short story collections, including First Person Singular (2020), and non-fiction works including Underground (1997), an oral history of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007), a memoir about his experience as a long distance runner. His fiction has polarized literary critics and the reading public. He has sometimes been criticised by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese, leading to Murakami's recalling that he was a "black sheep in the Japanese literary world". Meanwhile, Murakami has been described by Gary Fisketjon, the editor of Murakami's collection The Elephant Vanishes (1993), as a "truly extraordinary writer", while Steven Poole of The Guardian praised Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists" for his oeuvre.
I haven't read Haruki Murakami's novels, but I enjoy his nonfictions. This is the second essay collection that I've read. It is a travelog that spans from Boston, New York, Italy, Iceland, Cambodia to the author's native Japan.
It's chatty and casual, occasionally funny, dotted with the thoughts and realizations. Food and music are the two main themes.
The latest collection of travel essays written by Murakami Haruki was interesting enough to see unfamiliar places like Laos and Iceland, but I was slightly disappointed that Mr. Murakami's view is no longer fresh to me. I understand that it was because he wrote about where he had been in the past, but I also think that readers are hard to share his nostalgia while reading.
Travelogue; made me miss leaving the familiar routines and heading to an unfamiliar places. The books lengthen my wish list of post-pandemic travel- Boston and Finland to start with.
At the end of the book, I've realized that these trips were organized by a magazine. It was a bit disappointing to know that Murakami took these trips under various contracts- under a specific goal of writing about something. All the essays were good, but considering what you see and feel would be differernt when you leave for your leisure vs. when you leave for work, I feel little bit cheated. Feels like; after feeling pleasant joy from a surprising, later I find out that the event were not something spontenous, but completely orchestrated.
I love Haruki Murakami’s work and one of his quotes actually inspired me a lot. “不管全世界所有人怎麼說,我都認為自己的感受才是正確的。無論別人怎麼看,我絕不打亂自己的節奏。喜歡的事自然可以堅持,不喜歡怎麼也長久不了。”, 村上村樹! This book has several short story at different places where he lived or visited before, it’s not a tour book, it’s travel diary. I enjoyed of reading the book and ready for my next adventure.
This is less like a travel log and more like a diary during Murakami's travels. While I don't think it's a a conventional reference for travel (or even as inspiration for travelling) - description is too sparse for that - I find it interesting to know about his travelling style and habits. This is a light and easy read that is suitable for travels 😎
Not comparable with his fictions, but definitely worth reading as a travel book with great details of several places he has visited, with some humor and sarcasm.