Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami, born 12 January 1949 in Kyoto and raised near Kobe, is a Japanese novelist, short-story writer and translator. He ran the Tokyo jazz bar Peter Cat from 1974 to 1981 before publishing his first novel, "Hear the Wind Sing" (1979), which won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers. "Norwegian Wood" (1987) made him a household name in Japan, and "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" (1994-95), "Kafka on the Shore" (2002) and "1Q84" (2009-10) established his international readership; his most recent novel is "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" (2023). He has also written non-fiction, including "Underground" (1997) and "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" (2007), and translated Fitzgerald, Carver and Capote into Japanese. He has received the Franz Kafka Prize (2006), the Jerusalem Prize (2009) and the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature (2023).