Murakami description. Biography of Haruki Murakami. Blame it on jazz

One of the leading postmodern writers of our time, a winner of numerous literary awards and a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the unusually productive author Haruki Murakami continues to delight fans with his works. Harukists around the world are eagerly awaiting the widespread availability of the book Killing Commendatore. In the seven years since the release of 1Q84, fans have re-read the author's previous works and chosen their favorites.

What is the best book by Haruki Murakami? The question is not an easy one. Perhaps, first you need to get acquainted with the work of this extraordinary Japanese, and only then choose your and only your best book by Haruki Murakami.

The Unexpected Writer

Haruki himself said that the desire to write arose as a joke on April 1, 1974, while watching a baseball match at Tokyo's Jingu Stadium. The desire was clear and distinct. Five years later, the novel “Listen to the Song of the Wind” appeared, which received an award. Then “Pinball 1973,” which the author also considered a breakthrough.

Both novels immediately gained many fans and were subsequently included in the “Rat Trilogy” by Haruki Murakami. “Sheep Hunt” is a novel that complements the trilogy and received another award. The author himself considered this work to be the beginning of his writing career. Then the fourth part appeared - “Dance dance dance” by Haruki Murakami. Not many years passed, and the novel saw the light of day and made a victorious march through literary platforms. With a circulation of 2 million copies, the reader was presented with “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami.

Prerequisites

The Russian translator of the works of the Japanese author, Dmitry Kovalenin, in his book “Murakamiology” confirms the belief that nothing will come from nothing. In the case of Haruki, the prerequisites were there.

The boy grew up in a family of teachers of Japanese literature, which could not but affect the formation of a passion for reading, because he often heard his parents discussing poetry and war stories of the Middle Ages at the table. It is no coincidence that he studied at the theater department and specialized in classical drama at the prestigious Waseda University. Although his studies did not please him, reading a huge number of scripts certainly did not pass without a trace. And the sudden inspiration to write was probably influenced by proximity and close communication with Buddhist philosophy thanks to my grandfather, the priest of his small temple.

And then travel to Italy and Greece, followed by the Center for the Study of Foreign Cultures and Literatures at Princeton. It was away from Japan, according to the author, that he felt a great need to write about Japan itself.

Now Haruki Murakami lives in his homeland in Tokyo. A passionate running fan since the age of 33, he has written as an essayist for the book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The essays with engaging humor are dedicated to all the runners of the Earth.

Rebellion of Youth

Next door to the Harukami family home there was a bookstore with inexpensive books that were rented out by foreigners. It was with her that the author’s passion for Western literature and jazz music began. For conservative Japan at that time, his passion for American culture was truly a rebellious act. The family did not approve of Haruka's addictions. It was then that his famous vinyl collection began, when the boy saved on breakfast to buy CDs with his favorite jazz.

The rebellion will also manifest itself in the story of marriage, when, contrary to tradition, Murakami gets married before he has yet found his feet on his own. His opposition to traditional family principles will result in the opening of a bar, which Haruki, according to him, opened only to listen to music.

Only after living for a long time away from his homeland will he discover a new traditional Japan in adulthood.

Translation activities

The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami translated into Japanese books by F. S. Fitzgerald and T. Capote, D. Irving and J. Salinger, all the stories of Carver and Tim O. Brien, and translated the fairy tales of Ursula le Guin and Chris Van Allsburg. His 2003 translation of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's The Catcher in the Rye became the best-selling book in the foreign literature category.

What is the best book from Haruki Murakami's early works?

How many readers - so many opinions. A very prolific author with more than 50 short stories and novels covering themes of music and food, the collapse of Japanese traditions, love and death. All “Harukists” have their own best book by Haruki Murakami. We will offer an overview, but the choice is still up to the reader.

Let's start with the novel, which (according to the author) became the creative starting point of the writer Haruki Murakami. Sheep Hunt, the third book in the Rat Trilogy, is considered by critics to combine Zen philosophy and jazz improvisation. This is the first book that the Russian reader read. The idea of ​​the main character Sheep capturing and empowering the essences of different people in order to completely absorb their power is borrowed from ancient Chinese legend. The interweaving and suspense, a style akin to Coppola's Apocalypse Now, absorbs the reader, as does the insidious nature of the Sheep.

The understatement seems to continue in “Dance Dance Dance” by Haruki Murakami. A mystical detective story that destroys our reality, a parallel world and dance as meaning. Dance at the limit, on the verge of ecstasy, with tears in the eyes. The whole world is a dance floor, we are all dancing... Stopped - death. Thinking is prohibited. The metaphor is impressive.

Iconic Novels

The novel “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami is noted by critics and readers as the closest to reality. It was this book, filmed in 2010, that ensured the financial well-being of the author. The strangeness of the rebel Tooru Watanabe's love with two such different women and the polygamous sexual revolution. The struggle of spirit and flesh.

“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami is compared to “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy not only for the number of volumes in the novel, but also for the detailed, as if under a microscope, study of self-knowledge and self-improvement of a person. The unhurried narration at the beginning, the growth of mystical phenomena as one reads “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami, is permeated with universal human values ​​of good and evil, knowledge of one’s self. The meaning of life with little glimpses of love, peace and truth.

It is impossible to ignore the works “Kafka on the Beach” and “One Thousand Eighty-Four” with their tremendous success among readers. When the first and second volumes of the novel “One Thousand Eighty-Four” hit the shelves at the end of spring 2009, the author’s admirers in Japan sold out the edition in one day. The third volume appeared a year later, and the millionth edition disappeared from the shelves in a week and a half.

Greater success is predicted for Haruki Murakami’s latest two-volume book, “The Assassination of a Knight Commander,” which will be published in 2017. A circulation of one million copies is expected, with additional printing as needed. The plot of the novel is a mystery, but the author says he has created a unified story that includes the perspectives of different people.

Jazz in Murakami's books

The book “Jazz Portraits” by Haruki Murakami stands out. A passionate jazz fan since his youth, he boasts a collection of 400,000 vinyl records, which he began collecting at the age of 15 after attending a live concert by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. It is natural that he prepared a gift for readers in the form of descriptions of 55 jazzmen of the 20th century, starting with Chet Baker and ending with Gil Evans. After reading or listening to the collection, everyone will want to hear the music of those whom Haruki Murakami so vividly described.

It’s significant that Murakami himself said more than once in an interview that if it weren’t for jazz in his life, maybe he wouldn’t have written anything...

Faithful family man

While still at university, Haruki Murakami met his future wife, Yoko. They participated in anti-war rallies together, opposing the Vietnam War. The two of them ran the Peter Cat jazz bar, traveled around Europe and lived in America. In his family life, Haruki is a true Japanese. You can hardly see photographs of Yoko, but she is always next to her husband and remains his first reader. In 2002, the couple founded the Tokyo Dried Cuttlefish travel club and, together with like-minded people, visit those corners of the world where the Japanese have not yet been. Yoko is interested in photography and then illustrates family reports in glossy magazines.

Instead of an afterword

Haruki Murakami's best book has apparently not yet been written. In an interview, Haruka calls Fyodor Dostoevsky his idol. The sixty-eight-year-old Japanese best-selling author said in this regard: “He became more productive over the years and wrote The Brothers Karamazov when he was already old. I'd like to do the same."

Haruki Murakami (Japanese: 村上春樹). Born January 12, 1949 in Kyoto. Japanese writer and translator.

Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kyoto, in the family of a classical philology teacher.

Haruki Murakami's grandfather, a Buddhist priest, ran a small temple. My father taught Japanese language and literature at school, and in his spare time he was also engaged in Buddhist education. He studied classical drama at the Department of Theater Arts at Waseda University. In 1950, the writer’s family moved to the city of Asia, a suburb of the port of Kobe (Hyogo Prefecture).

In 1971, he married his classmate Yoko, with whom he still lives, no children. In 1974, he opened his own jazz bar, Peter Cat, in the Kokubunji district of Tokyo. In 1977, he moved his bar to a quieter area of ​​the city, Sendagaya.

In April 1978, during a baseball game, I realized that I could write a book. Still doesn't know why exactly. In Murakami’s own words: “I just understood it - that’s all.” Murakami increasingly stayed after the bar closed for the night and wrote texts - with an ink pen on simple sheets of paper.

In 1979, the story “Listen to the Song of the Wind” was published - the first part of the so-called. "The Rat Trilogy". For her, he received the literary prize “Gunzo Shinjin-sho” - a prestigious award awarded annually by the magazine “Gunzo” to aspiring Japanese writers. And a little later - the “Noma Prize” from the leading literary magazine “Bungay” for the same thing. By the end of the year, the prize-winning novel had sold out a circulation unheard of for a debut - over 150 thousand hardcover copies.

In 1981, Murakami sold his bar license and became a professional writer. In 1982, he completed his first novel, Sheep Hunt, the third installment of the Rat Trilogy. In the same year he received another Noma award for it.

In 1985, the novel “Unstoppable Wonderland and the End of the World” was published, for which he received the Tanizaki Prize in the same year. In addition to the above-mentioned novel, this year a book of children's fairy tales, “The Christmas of the Sheep,” with illustrations by Sasaki Maki, and a collection of short stories, “The Deadly Heat of the Carousel with Horses,” were published.

In 1986, Murakami left with his wife for Italy, and later for Greece. Traveled to several islands of the Aegean Sea. A collection of short stories, “Repeat Raid on the Bakery,” was published in Japan.

In 1988, in London, Murakami completed work on the novel Dance, Dance, Dance, a continuation of the Rat Trilogy.

In 1990, a collection of short stories, Teletubbies Strike Back, was published in Japan.

In 1991, Murakami moved to the United States and took a position as a research intern at Princeton University, New Jersey. An 8-volume collection of works was published in Japan, which included everything that was written between 1979 and 1989. In 1992, he received the degree of associate professor at Princeton University. He completed and published the novel “South of the Border, West of the Sun” in Japan.

Having left Japan for the West, he, who spoke excellent English, for the first time in the history of Japanese literature began to look at his homeland through the eyes of a European: “I went to the States for almost five years, and suddenly, while living there, I completely unexpectedly wanted to write about Japan and about the Japanese. Sometimes about the past, sometimes about how things are now. It’s easier to write about your country when you are far away. Before that, I somehow didn’t really want to write about Japan. I just wanted to write about myself and my world,” he recalled in one of his interviews.

In July 1993, he moved to Santa Ana, California, and lectured on modern (post-war) world literature at William Howard Taft University. Visited China and Mongolia.

In 1994, the first 2 volumes of the novel “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” were published in Tokyo.

1995 - Volume 3 of Chronicles was published. Two tragedies happened in Japan at once: the Kobe earthquake and the sarin attack of the Aum Shinrikyo sect. Murakami began work on the documentary book "Underground".

In 1996 he published a collection of short stories, Ghosts of Lexington. Returned to Japan and settled in Tokyo. Conducted a number of meetings and interviews with victims and executioners of the “sarin terrorist attack.”

In 2000 he published a collection of short stories, All God's Children Can Dance.

January 2001 - moved to a house on the seashore in Oiso, where he still lives.

August 2002 - wrote the preface to “Wonderland Without Brakes,” published in Moscow.

In February 2003, he released a new translation of Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, which broke all sales records for translated literature in Japan at the beginning of the new century.

In June-July 2003, together with colleagues from the Tokyo Dried Cuttlefish travel club, I visited Russia for the first time - on the island of Sakhalin. In September I went to Iceland. At the same time, he began work on another novel, which was published in 2004 under the title “Afterglow.”

In 2006, the writer received the Franz Kafka Literary Prize. The award ceremony took place in the City Hall of Assembly in Prague, where the nominee was presented with a small Kafka statue and a check for 10 thousand dollars.

In 2008, in an interview with the Kyodo news agency, Murakami said that he was working on a new very large novel. “Every day now I sit at a desk for five to six hours,” Murakami said. “I’ve been working on a new novel for a year and two months.” The writer assures that he is inspired by Dostoevsky. “He became more productive over the years and wrote The Brothers Karamazov when he was already old. I'd like to do the same."

According to Murakami, he intends to create "a gigantic novel that would absorb the chaos of the whole world and clearly show the direction of its development." That is why the writer has now abandoned the intimate manner of his early works, which were usually written in the first person. “The novel that I keep in my head combines the views of different people, different stories, which creates a common unified story,” explains the writer. “So I have to write now in the third person.”

In 2009, Haruki Murakami condemned Israel for its counter-terrorism operation in the Gaza Strip. The writer said this in Jerusalem, using the platform provided to him in connection with the award of the Jerusalem Literary Prize for 2009: “As a result of the attack on the Gaza Strip, more than a thousand people were killed, including many unarmed citizens. To come here to receive the prize would be to give the impression that I support a policy of overwhelming use of military force. However, instead of not being present and remaining silent, I chose to speak.”

On May 28, 2009, the writer’s new novel “1Q84” went on sale in Japan. The entire launch edition of the book was sold out before the end of the day.

In September 2010, the Russian translation of Murakami’s book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” was published. According to the author, this is a collection of “sketches about running, but not the secrets of a healthy lifestyle.” “To write sincerely about running,” says Murakami, “is to write sincerely about yourself.”

Bibliography of Haruki Murakami:

1979 - Listen to the song of the wind
1980 - Pinball
1982 - Sheep Hunt
1985 - Wonderland without brakes and the End of the World
1987 - Norwegian Wood
1988 - Dance, Dance, Dance
1992 - South of the Border, West of the Sun
1994-1995 - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
1999 - My favorite sputnik
2002 - Kafka on the Beach
2004 - Afterglow
2009-2010 - 1Q84
2013 - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of wanderings

Film adaptations by Haruki Murakami:

1980 - “Listen to the Song of the Wind” - a film adaptation of the novel of the same name. Directed by Kazuki Omori
2004 - “Tony Takitani” (eng. Tony Takitani). The film is based on a story by Tony Takia from the collection Ghosts of Lexington. Directed by Jun Ichikawa
2007 - All God's Children Can Dance, directed by Robert Lowdgefall
2010 - “Norwegian Wood” - a film adaptation of the novel of the same name. Directed by Tran Anh Hung.

Haruki Murakami should not be confused with his namesake Ryu Murakami. These are completely different people and writers. However, Haruki is much more popular all over the world. It is he who is primarily associated with this surname. Murakami is one of the main modern postmodernists in literature.

In total, he wrote 14 novels, 12 collections of short stories, one book of children's fairy tales and five works in the non-fiction genre. His books have been translated into more than 50 languages ​​and sell millions of copies. Murakami has received many Japanese and international awards, but has so far passed him by, although almost every year he is one of its main favorites.

Murakami is a continuator of traditions and its founders like Natsume Soseki and Ryunosuke Akutagawa. However, at the instigation of Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata, his reputation as a “European from Japanese literature” was established. Indeed, Japanese culture and traditions do not play the same role in his books as in the works of the same Kawabata, Yukio Mishima or Kobo Abe.

Murakami grew up under the great influence of American culture; his favorite writers were always Americans. In addition, Haruki lived for many years in Europe and the USA, which also influenced his work.

For Japanese literature, Murakami's books are a unique example of how a Japanese looks at his homeland through the eyes of a Westerner.

Murakami's books take place primarily in modern Japan. His heroes are people of the era of globalization and mass culture. Japanese names and titles aside, Murakami's novels could have taken place anywhere. The main characteristic of his artistic universe is cosmopolitanism. This is largely why his books are so popular all over the world.

What are the features of his work?

1. Almost all books have elements of fantasy and surrealism. So, in the novel “Wonderland without Brakes and the End of the World” events take place in a city whose inhabitants have no shadows, and the narrator reads dreams in the skulls of dead unicorns. Very often, Murakami's books describe completely ordinary people to whom extraordinary things happen. According to the writer himself, this type of plot (ordinary people in unusual circumstances) is his favorite.

2. Many of Murakami’s works are dystopias. The most striking example is the writer’s three-volume book “1Q84”, the title of which refers to the classic of the genre - Orwell’s novel “1984”.

3. Murakami's novels are postmodern works. Whatever serious topic the writer takes on, he will reveal it in a distinctly detached manner, without taking any specific position, but allowing the reader to choose for himself what is more important and closer to him.

4. Music. The writer himself is a great connoisseur of jazz and is known for his unique collection of 40 thousand jazz records. By his own admission, Murakami has been listening to jazz 10 hours a day for many years.

"Norwegian Wood" tells the story of friendship, love, suffering and joy of several Japanese students. An important place in the novel is occupied by the protests of the 60s, when students all over the world took to the streets and rebelled against the modern order. But the main theme of the novel is how it affects people.

The narrative of Kafka on the Beach centers on two characters: a teenager named Kafka Tamura and an old man named Nakata. Their destinies are connected in a mystical way, both join the other world and live on the edge between reality and space outside of time. This is a mystical novel typical of Murakami, raising a huge number of philosophical themes and questions.

If you choose the most monumental book of the writer in order to understand all his main ideas and stylistic features from one work, it is worth noting “1Q84”, which in the Russian translation has the subtitle “One Thousand Eighty-Four.”

The book tells about two heroes - a female fitness club instructor and a mathematics teacher. Both characters represent two different branches of this larger story. The first of them is associated with alternative worlds, and the second is more realistic, but hides a deep subtext.

The main thing in Murakami's book is how the two stories are intertwined and connected into a single message. This three-volume epic touches on numerous topics, from love and religion to generational conflict and suicide. According to the writer, when creating this “giant novel” he was inspired by Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which he considers one of the best works in the history of world literature.

Which Murakami books are undeservedly underrated?

Every writer has books that everyone knows about. And there are those that are either forgotten or known to a very narrow circle of fans. Murakami also has such works. Despite their little fame, reading them is no less interesting than recognized masterpieces.

The novels “My beloved sputnik” and “After Dark” are typical things for Murakami on the border between reality and fantasy, but the writer reveals both plots in a very original manner. The first involves the mysterious disappearance of the main character on the Greek islands, and the second takes place in Tokyo over the course of one night.

A little-known book written in the non-fiction genre is a collection of autobiographical essays entitled “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” The title of the collection refers to the work of one of Murakami’s favorite writers, Raymond Carver, whose work “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” was translated by Haruki from English into Japanese.

The work represents the writer’s memoirs about his studies, which, in addition to literature and jazz, is his main hobby. According to Haruka, “to write sincerely about running means to write sincerely about yourself.”

Why read Murakami?

Murakami is an author who in all his books speaks either about modernity or about the future of humanity. And he does it as accurately as possible. Some of his books can be regarded as warnings to society. They should be read so as not to make the mistakes that the Japanese describes.

His books are read by millions of people around the world, making Murakami's work truly global and influential.

In addition, much in the author’s works can truly expand human consciousness. There is something in his books that can shock, amaze and delight the reader. Murakami is a true master of words, whose style is fascinating and a real pleasure.

Who might like Murakami's work?

The flourishing of Murakami's work coincided with the growth of his popularity among Russian readers. These events took place in the 90s. However, unlike many other authors, love for Murakami has not faded. He still remains one of the most read foreign authors in Russia.

When Murakami began translating here, his audience was mainly young people with a rich imagination and broad views. Now these people, who almost grew up on the books of the Japanese, remain his devoted fans, but the books have also gained new fans.

Murakami is still interesting to young people because he keeps up with the times, and each new novel becomes relevant and modern. Therefore, it is never too late to start reading Murakami. All people who live for today and at the same time look to the future will definitely enjoy his work.

If you read the annotations of his books, each of them begins with the same phrase: this is the most (original epithet) book of the famous Japanese writer. And the author of these works bears the titles of the very best: the most widely read writer and the most un-Japanese Japanese.

Japanese names are not too familiar to the Russian-hearing ear. That's why writers' names are changed. Kenzaburo Oe becomes Podzaborom Oi, Abe Kobo - Aby Kogo. Mishima and Kawabata did not escape this fate, but the “translations” of their names are long and obscene. And only “Haruki Murakami” is unlikely to be remade - it already has roots familiar from childhood.

But they don’t read it because of them! And because of what? Typically, critics, burdened with the burden of thousands of volumes of world classics, like to pick apart a book piece by piece. They joyfully pounce on the text and cheerfully tear it to shreds, tightly pinning a label to each piece: this is the influence of Joyce, this is taken from Marquez, here is Dostoevsky, Kafka, Hemingway, and so on. The method is excellent, although pointless. In almost any book you can find allusions, alleles and parallels to the classics and delve into them endlessly. This method of text analysis can be called “relationship analysis.”

A fundamentally different approach is the analysis of mutual understandings. The writer somehow interacts with the world, trying to understand it. And he transfers this understanding to paper. Tracking moments, comparing them with each other and with one’s own point of view is, in my opinion, a very exciting task. Murakami's books are dedicated to her. He himself calls his work “sushi noir” - black sushi. These are sort of rancid, blackened rice balls. This is probably why people read Murakami, spit, but still read.

In his interviews, he says that he did not want to become popular. What he writes about people who have scattered their goals and lost their values. What is modern youth like?

Strange. It seems to me that it is young people today who know exactly what they want. And those who don’t know, read Murakami. And with surprise they realize that they live like his heroes - thoughtlessly and aimlessly. This is what unites them into a kind of virtual sect. And if before their heads were pristine, now Murakami has settled there. There is something to talk about, something to discuss, but nothing else. Is not it?

Murakami is full of physiological descriptions. He got up, walked, got there... Sat down, ate, went again... The main character does nothing significant for most of the story. But we swallow it without understanding what prevents us from putting off reading or looking to the end.

It's simple: this text is a description of dynamic meditation. The hero thinks not only with the help of thoughts, but also with the help of body movements. Raised in Zen culture, Murakami, who easily ran marathons, knows the value of movement. He understands how important it is sometimes to rest his head, swollen from thoughts, and think with his body. Note that before almost every important decision, Murakami’s characters do exactly this.

The next point is that there is always a mystery. The hero necessarily does not understand something: the actions of others, their words, reactions. The circumstances into which the hero finds himself are mysterious. Again following Zen practices, Murakami explores cause-and-effect relationships here. And the reason definitely appears. Sometimes it is predictable, sometimes it is not, but it also always has its own reason. Murakami lets his hero swim through this sea of ​​reasons until he finds the very, very, notorious beginning of everything. A beginning that no one needs and is no longer interesting.

Murakami is a master of interestingly describing the search for an uninteresting goal. Here again Zen shines through in all the cracks: the path is everything, the goal is nothing.

And his heroes themselves are interesting, by and large, only to themselves and their close circle. And even then, the author always pretends that the hero is not particularly interesting to himself. And when a character suddenly commits a strange act, this is just a reason to reflect on the topic: how poorly I know myself... Don’t believe me! He knows everything. But he won’t admit it to you.

In fact, Murakami's heroes are internally complete. And this is a sign of remarkable skill. But this integrity is presented through the perception of other characters: so a kind of mosaic, which is the task of the reader to put together. And readers love it and enthusiastically pounce on the toy slipped by the author, putting together several similar semantic “puzzles” during the book.

And here it is - a grandiose fiction, because of which Murakami is now read everywhere: he writes about worthless people. People squeezed by a world they do not understand, who could not achieve something significant, valued by the majority of those around them. The reader, who cherishes his unfulfilled ambitions, instantly accepts such a hero as “one of his own.” And it’s especially pleasant when such a nonentity suddenly turns out to be capable of something more. The prince was hiding in the toad! “We can do it too!” - readers think by inertia and continue to remain as they were, not paying attention to how hard and painstakingly the characters in Murakami’s books work on themselves.

Another Murakami point is women. Women for Murakami are the embodiment of mystery. Ladies for him are walking Zen, unknown and inexpressible. They are “Kami” - higher beings, goddesses. It is possible to describe their manifestations, but there is no way to understand them to the point where even a slight predictability appears. Murakami fearlessly describes intimate scenes - with naturalness bordering on pornography. And at the same time he freezes, holding his breath, talking about a woman’s... ear! As if it were the most perfect creation of the gods in all respects.

Murakami's music plays constantly. The many years of his youth, when he was the owner of a jazz cafe, take their toll. All these countless compositions by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Charlie Parker, Elvis Presley and many, many others should, it would seem, create the appropriate mood and color the background of the narrative. But... I heard them, he heard them, but what about the young people raised on “scooters” and “Brilliants”? Young people who think the Beatles are mastodons and suck?

However, Russian muracamologists combed through all his books and compiled a list of the most frequently mentioned compositions. They collected it and put it on disk: “Soundtracks for Murakami’s books.” So now you can read and listen at the same time.

Anyone who has read Murakami... And Murakami?..

Do you know, dear readers, that Murakami is the first Japanese writer to become popular in Russia thanks to the Internet? Or more precisely, thanks to the orientalist Dmitry Kovalenin, who translated the famous “Sheep Hunt” and posted it on his website, where for more than a year (before the appearance of the paper version) this translation was available to everyone? And now a final question: did you know that Dmitry Kovalenin himself is a writer? Have you read his works? But didn’t anyone pay attention to the fact that Kovalenin’s own narrative style is not at all different from the style of Murakami translated by him?

I am far from thinking that Murakami does not exist, and that what exists is a global literary hoax. But it seems. A Japanese man has been writing a book for several years. A Russian has been translating it for several years. Talented translation is the creation of a new text. Remember what the Strugatskys, Mirer, Nora Gal and Igor Mozheiko did. Their translations were literature - unlike the interlinear translations of a legion of other translators. So it is here: Kovalenin created the Russian Murakami, whether we want it or not.

But what Murakami is really like, you and I will never know. Unless we learn Japanese...

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto on January 12, 1949. His parents worked as teachers of Japanese literature. After Haruka's birth, the whole family moved to the major seaport of Japan - Kobe. Over time, the little boy began to develop an interest in literature, especially foreign literature.

In 1968, Murakami entered one of the most famous and prestigious universities in Japan - Waseda, where he studied at the Faculty of Theater Arts, specializing in classical drama. But studying was not a joy; it was boring for the young man, who was forced to spend days on end rereading a huge number of scripts that were kept in the museum of the institute. In 1971, he married the girl Yoko, with whom he studied together. During his training, Haruki took an active part in the anti-war movement, while opposing the Vietnam War. Despite his lack of interest in studying, Murakami was able to successfully graduate from Waseda University, receiving a degree in modern drama.

In 1974, Haruki was able to open the Peter Cat jazz bar in Tokyo, and ran the bar for 7 years. This year also marked the start of writing my first novel. The writer's desire to write this novel arose during a baseball game, when he suddenly felt that he had to do it. Although Haruka had no writing experience before this, because he believed that he was not endowed with writing talent. And in April 1974, he began writing the novel Hear the Wind Sing, published in 1979. This literary creation was awarded the Nation's Literary Award for Emerging Writers.

However, according to the author, these works were “weak” and he did not want them to be translated into other languages. But readers had a different opinion. They recognized these novels, noting that they had a personal writing style that other authors did not have. As a result, this novel was included in the “Rat Trilogy” along with the novels “Pinball 1973” and “Sheep Hunt”.

Murakami loves to travel. He spent three years in Italy and Greece. Then, upon arriving in the United States, he settled in Princeton, teaching at the local university. In 1980, Haruki had to sell his bar and began making a living from his works. When work on The Sheep Hunt was completed in 1981, he received another award. This was the beginning of his development as a writer and gaining worldwide popularity. After the novel Norwegian Wood was published in 1987, Murakami earned popular recognition. A total of 2 million copies of the novel, which was written during the writer's long journey to Rome and Greece, were sold. “Norwegian Wood” brought Murakami fame not only in Japan, but also outside of it throughout the world and is currently considered one of his best works. Also at this time, the writer finished work on his novel Dance, Dance, Dance, which became a continuation of the Rat Trilogy.

That same year, Haruki was invited to teach at the Princeton Institute in New Jersey, where he remained to live. In 1992, he began teaching at the University of California. William Howard Taft. He wrote actively during this time, producing most of the novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This novel is considered the most capacious and complex of all Murakami's works.

Today, Haruki Murakami is the most popular writer in modern Japan, as well as the winner of the Yomiuri Literary Prize, which has also been awarded to such acclaimed authors as Kobo Abe, Kenzaburo Oe and Yukio Mishima. And Murakami’s works have already been translated into 20 world languages, including Russian.

He publishes about one novel a year. According to Haruka himself, he rarely returns to his books and rereads them. In Russia, the translation of his books is carried out by Dmitry Kovalenin, who published a book that tells about Murakami’s creative path, its title “Murakamidenye”.

Haruki Murakami was one of the first writers who opened the world's eyes to modern Japan, in which there is an alternative youth subculture, no different from those in London, Moscow or New York. Its main character is a lazy young man who is obsessed with finding a girl with unusual ears. He has strange eating habits. He mixes seaweed with shrimp in vinegar, roasted veal with salted plums, etc. He drives aimlessly in his car around the city and shares his “burning” questions: how can one-armed disabled people cut bread? Why is the Japanese Subaru more comfortable than the Italian Maserati? The hero is one of the last romantics and idealists, who sadly recalls unjustified hopes, but is still convinced of the power of good. He loves popular culture: David Lynch, the Rolling Stones, horror films, detective stories and Stephen King, in general, everything that is not recognized by highbrow aesthetes in the sacred intellectual bohemian circles of youth. He is closer to carefree guys and girls from disco bars, who fall in love only for a day or an hour and remember their hobbies only on a motorcycle rushing along the road. Perhaps this is why he is interested in the girl’s unusual ears, and not her eyes, because he does not want to pretend and wants to always remain himself in every situation and with absolutely any person.

At the age of 33, Haruki Murakami quit smoking and began to actively train, running many kilometers every day and swimming in the pool. After he moved to live from Japan to the West, speaking excellent English, he was the first in the history of Japanese national literature to begin to see his homeland through the eyes of a modern European. He says that after leaving his country, he suddenly wanted to write about it, about its people, about the past and present of Japan. It is easier for him to write about Japan when he is far away from it, because then he can see the country as it really is. Before that, he did not want to write about his homeland, wanting to simply share with readers his thoughts about himself and his own world. Now Japan occupies a significant place in all the literary works of Haruki Murakami.