Blind willow, sleeping woman

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing , won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World , but it was Norwegian Wood , published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women , Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.