Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

A naturalistic coming-of-age story… sprinkled with strange images and written in a hauntingly mournful key * Guardian *[Murakmi’s] elegant, frugal prose creates a tale of courage and hope as Tsukuru tries to unlock the secrets of his past * Stylist *Critics have variously likened Murakami to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon – a roster so ill-assorted to suggest he is in fact an original * New York Times *A rich and even brilliant piece of work… Genuinely resonant and satisfying – James Walton * Spectator *This is a book for both the new and experienced reader….[it] reveals another side of Murakami, one not so easy to pin down. Incurably restive, ambiguous and valiantly struggling toward a new level of maturation – Patti Smith * New York Times *Murakami’s prose seamlessly fuses folksiness and profundity… A harmonious blend of naivety and riddling sophistication’ – Boyd Tonkin * Independent *Neat, economical, even minimalist… surprisingly painful and poignant * Literary Review *Murakami is like a magician who explains what he’s doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers … But while anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it’s the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves * New York Times Book Review *Delicately crafted masterpiece * The List *Remarkable… Spellbinding… [Murakami] is ever alert to minds and hearts…and to humanity’s abiding and indomitable spirit – Marie Arana * Washington Post *

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 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, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami’s unique and addictive fictional universe.

Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring Murakami’s place as one of the world’s most acclaimed and well-loved writers.