Customers also bought

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into thirty-four languages, and the most recent of his many honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Kobo Abe.


From the Trade Paperback edition. [Edit review] [Delete review]

Introduction to the English Edition

1.) Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
2.) Birthday Girl
3.) New York Mining Disaster
4.) Airplane: Or, How He Talked to Himself as If Reciting Poetry
5.) The Mirror
6.) A Folklore for My Generation: A Pre-History of Late-Stage Capitalism
7.) Hunting Knife
8.) A Perfect Day for Kangaroos
9.) Dabchick
10.) Man-Eating Cats
11.) A “Poor Aunt” Story
12.) Nausea 1979
13.) The Seventh Man
14.) The Year of Spaghetti
15.) Tony Takitani
16.) The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes
17.) The Ice Man
18.) Crabs
19.) Firefly
20.) Chance Traveler
21.) Hanalei Bay
22.) Where I’m Likely to Find It
23.) The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day
24.) A Shinagawa Monkey [Edit review] [Delete review]

From the bestselling author of Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicles comes this superb collection of twenty-four stories that generously expresses Murakami’s mastery of the form. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining.

Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.


From the Trade Paperback edition. [Edit review] [Delete review]

“A true miscellany [or] more like one of those overstuffed, career-spanning CD box sets…[But] the tales seem to speak with one, very seductive, voice. That voice, in each of these wildly varied excursions into the strange, dim territory of the self, says that someone named Haruki Murakami is still looking, quixotically, for something less fragile, less provisional than the usual accommodations we make do with on the road.”
--Terrence Rafferty, New York Times Book Review

"A virtuosic demonstration of Murakami's incredible range . . . thrilling, funny, sad, moving, scary--all at once. Since 1980, the year Haruki Murakami wrote his first short story, the Japanese author has been a walking definition of genius . . . He is a master of tone, and can manipulate a reader's curiosity at will, [and he] approaches the large subjects indirectly, through mood and bizarre occurrences, and always trusts his reader to be moved."
--John Freeman,... [More...] [Edit review] [Delete review]

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman


When I closed my eyes, the scent of the wind wafted up toward me. A May wind, swelling up like a piece of fruit, with a rough outer skin, slimy flesh, dozens of seeds. The flesh split open in midair, spraying seeds like gentle buckshot into the bare skin of my arms, leaving behind a faint trace of pain.

“What time is it?” my cousin asked me. About eight inches shorter than me, he had to look up when he talked.

I glanced at my watch. “Ten twenty.”

“Does that watch tell good time?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

My cousin grabbed my wrist to look at the watch. His slim, smooth fingers were surprisingly strong. “Did it cost a lot?”

“No, it’s pretty cheap,” I said, glancing again at the timetable.

No response.

My cousin looked confused. The white teeth between his parted lips looked like bones that had... [More...] [Edit review] [Delete review]