His fiction has polarized literary critics and the reading public.
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Murakami has also published five short story collections, including his most recently published work, First Person Singular (2020), and non-fiction works including Underground (1997), inspired by personal interviews Murakami conducted with victims of the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the Tokyo subway sarin attack, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007), a series of personal essays about his experience as a marathon runner. His official website lists Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Brautigan as key inspirations to his work, while Murakami himself has cited Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy, and Dag Solstad as his favourite currently active writers. His work spans genres including science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction, and has become known for its use of magical realist elements. His notable works include the novels Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95), Kafka on the Shore (2002), and 1Q84 (2009–10), with 1Q84 ranked as the best work of Japan's Heisei era (1989-2019) by the national newspaper Asahi Shimbun's survey of literary experts. Growing up in Kobe before moving to Tokyo to attend Waseda University, he published his first novel Hear the Wind Sing (1979) after working as the owner of a small jazz bar for seven years. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Gunzou Prize for New Writers, the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J.M.
His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside Japan. Haruki Murakami ( 村上 春樹, Murakami Haruki, born January 12, 1949) is a Japanese writer.