Murakami Haruki is a popular contemporary writer and translator, known for his fluid, Westernized style, which breaks from the traditional Japanese emphasis on beautiful language. He tends to write his fiction while living abroad, having spent time in Greece, Spain, and the United States. Many of Murakami’s novels have been translated into English, including the fantasy Sekai no owari to hadoboirudo wandarando (1985; tr. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, 1991), his breakthrough novel Noruwei no mori (1987; tr. Norwegian Wood, 1989), and the long novel Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru (1995; tr. The WindUp Bird Chronicle, 1998) for which he won the Yomiuri Prize. Several of Murakami’s works have been adapted for film and theater. He has also translated works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and Paul Theroux, among others, into Japanese.
Historical dictionary of modern Japanese literature and theater. J. Scott Miller. 2009.