Haruki Murakami
I was first introduced to Haruki Murakami through The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a tale of a simple, unemployed man, interspersed with a recollection of the Japanese occupation of Manchukuo, and, in the middle of it all, a cat named Noboru Wataya. Murakami is a master of piquing curiosity through his description of the sometimes mundane, sometimes puzzling actions of his characters and the environment that they are in. These results in an inability to put the book down once you’ve started it. After The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I was hooked: Kafka on the Shore, After Dark, 1Q84, Norwegian Wood and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. The more I read of Murakami, the more I fell in love with the way he blends reality and fiction. It’s almost like reading a dream, where something totally run-of-the-mill could subtly transform into something strange and you probably wouldn’t even notice it happen until you consciously think about it afterwards. Thirteen of his novels have been translated and four collections of his various short stories have been published. And throughout most of them, the author’s love for jazz shines through. The references in his work aren’t something casually picked out of a playlist and inserted crassly, but rather curated and used purposefully to add an extra layer of depth to his words. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a man who postponed his studies to open up his own jazz bar but that is a story for another time. – Daniel Goh
