Killing Commendatore

It’s safe to say that there’s no one like Murakami * Literary Review *Murakami’s reality has many sides; some plain, some fancy. Translators Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen capture every colour on this mind-altering palette. No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades. Murakami’s “Land of Metaphor” remains a country where wonders never cease – Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times *Wild, thrilling… Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked * Sunday Times *Expansive and intricate … touches on many of the themes familiar in Mr. Murakami’s novels: the mystery of romantic love, the weight of history, the transcendence of art, the search for elusive things just outside our grasp * New York Times *I found it totally gripping with scarcely a dull page, the loose ends enhancing its mystery. An absorbing work by a great writer * Daily Express *An immersive big-hearted new novel * Independent *Written in a simple, readable style that leaves you free to concentrate on the weirdness of the content… There is no other writer able to give us the fix that his unique qualities provide * Sunday Express *In this novel, [Murakami] captures the creative process compellingly… The complex landscape that Murakami assembles in Killing Commendatore is a word portrait of the artist’s inner life * Times Literary Supplement *Murakami keeps the reader gripped * The Week *Rich, sprawling… Killing Commendatore is a… powerful, sustained meditation on how we engage with works of art * Daily Telegraph *

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.