Short stories by Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949. He grew up in Kobe and then moved to Tokyo, where he attended Waseda University. After college, Murakami opened a small jazz bar, which he and his wife ran for seven years.
His first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won the Gunzou Literature Prize for budding writers in 1979. He followed this success with two sequels, Pinball, 1973, and A Wild Sheep Chase, which all together form “The Trilogy of the Rat.”
Murakami is also the author of the novels Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; Norwegian Wood; Dance Dance Dance; South of the Border, West of the Sun; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Sputnik Sweetheart; Kafka on the Shore; After Dark; 1Q84; and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. He has written three short story collections: The Elephant Vanishes; After the Quake; Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman; and an illustrated novella, The Strange Library.
Additionally, Murakami has written several works of nonfiction. After the Hanshin earthquake and the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack in 1995, he interviewed surviving victims, as well as members of the religious cult responsible. From these interviews, he published two nonfiction books in Japan, which were selectively combined to form Underground. He also wrote a series of personal essays on running, entitled What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
The most recent of his many international literary honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera, and V. S. Naipaul. Murakami’s work has been translated into more than fifty languages.
Listing 48 stories.
A nameless person tells a story of when they had an intimate conversation over dinner with a former schoolmate whom they idealized.
A man who unknowingly talks to himself wonders why a woman who is satisfied with her marriage is having an affair with him.
A writer gives an account of his friend Dr. Tokai, a kind and sophisticated plastic surgeon who died after his first real heartbreak.
After a month of preparing, a couple finally picks the perfect day to go see the baby kangaroo at the zoo, only to greet the day with argument and thoughts of potential disappointment.
An author discusses with his friend the best way to write about a poor aunt. Their words take on a new power when he manifests a literal poor aunt on his back and draws in spectators.
A Japanese woman who has begun to forget her name, frantically seeks the help of an eccentric clinician who eventually claims to know what happened to her name.
A Japanese businessman reflects on his experience with Chinese people and longs to visit China.
A twenty-two-year-old male tutor gives various women feedback on their writing in letter form. When he quits his job, he visits one of his former correspondents for lunch at her apartment.
An advertising model befriends an older man. After she returns from Algeria, her new boyfriend reveals an unsettling hobby to the man that continues to haunt him long after the model’s mysterious disappearance.
A woman waiting tables on her twentieth birthday has a strange interaction with the owner of the restaurant who says that he may grant her one wish.