Haruki Murakami (Murakami Haruki, born January 12, 1949) is a Japanese writer.

His novels,
essays, and short stories have been bestsellers 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 Gunzou Prize for New Writers, the
World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka
].Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize

Growing up in 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), with 1Q84 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 its use of magical realist elements. His official website
lists Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Brautigan as key inspirations to his
work, while Murakami himself has cited Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy, and Dag Solstad
as his favourite currently active writers. Murakami has also published five short story
collections, including his most recently published work, First Person Singular (2020), and
non-fiction works including Underground (1997), inspired by personal interviews Murakami
conducted with victims of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, and What I Talk About When I Talk
About Running (2007), a series of personal essays about his experience as a marathon
].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.] Murakami was
born in Kyoto, Japan, during the post-World War II baby boom and raised in Nishinomiya,
Ashiya and Kobe. He is an only child. His father was the son of a Buddhist priest, and his
mother is the daughter of an Osaka merchant. Both taught Japanese literature. His father
was involved in the Second Sino-Japanese War, and was deeply traumatized by it, which
].would, in turn, affect Murakami

Since childhood, Murakami, like Kōbō Abe, has been heavily influenced by Western culture,
particularly Western as well as Russian music and literature. He grew up reading a wide
range of works by European and American writers, such as Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert,
Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Brautigan and Jack Kerouac.
]These Western influences distinguish Murakami from the majority of other Japanese writers

Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met Yoko, now his wife.
His first job was at a record store. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened a
coffee house and jazz bar, Peter Cat, in Kokubunji, Tokyo, which he ran with his wife,from
].1974 to 1981.] The couple decided not to have children

Murakami is an experienced marathon runner and triathlon enthusiast, though he did not
start running until he was 33 years old, after he began as a way to stay healthy despite the
hours spent at his desk writing. On June 23, 1996, he completed his first ultramarathon, a
100 km race around Lake Saroma in Hokkaido, Japan. He discusses his relationship with
].running in his 2008 memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running