Discover an Author: Haruki Murakami

Japanese author Haruki Murakami is a unique author if there ever was one. He is the best-selling translated writer in America right now and his novels are fast-paced and full of intriguing plot twists. Murakami has made a reputation for being a leader in the hip generation of Japanese who sought freedom from the disenchantment of traditional Japanese culture in the years after World War II, by embracing American pop culture. He has been called the "Japanese Jay McInerney" and the "Japanese Bret Easton Ellis," because of his hip writing style and his ability to attract masses of younger readers. His fashionable clothes and cool demeanor all add to his attraction, while his writing style is truly one-of-a-kind. He also has a strong penchant for jazz music, and once owned and operated a jazz bar with his wife. As an adolescent, Murakami read Western literature and authors like Raymond Chandler, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ray Bradbury. During the turbulent times of his student years, he said he wanted to live just like Philip Marlowe, Chandler’s famous protagonist. Be sure to check out his latest novel, Kafka on the Shore:

Kafka Tamura runs away from home to escape his father's oedipal prophecy and to find his long-lost mother and sister. As Kafka flees, so too does Nakata, an elderly simpleton whose quiet life has been upset by a gruesome murder. What follows is a kind of double odyssey, as the two grope to understand the roles fate has in store for them.