Haruki Murakami’s life has been shaped by the kinds of sudden inexplicable encounters that fill his writing with a characteristic buoyancy and unpredictability. In 1978, for instance, Murakami, then a young proprietor of a jazz bar in Tokyo, attended a baseball game. While sipping a beer, Murakami watched a player walk up to the diamond, swing, and score a double – which is when Murakami suddenly thought: “I could write a novel… I went to a stationery store and bought a fountain pen and paper.” In this way, at the age of twenty-nine, Murakami was inspired to write his first work,
Hear the Wind Sing(1979).
Hear the Wind Sing – with minimalist prose, an experimental point of view, and a disjointed structure – won Gunzo Magazine’s new writer award in 1980. After gaining
1511 words
Citation: Chozick, Matthew. "Haruki Murakami". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 May 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5415, accessed 23 November 2024.]
