Murakami quit his jazz bar at 29 to write novels. His books are dreamlike, blending realism with surrealism: a man searches for his missing cat while his wife cheats; teenagers find a secret passage to another world; a man talks to Colonel Sanders about philosophy. He writes about alienation in modern Japan, loneliness, jazz, and the thin membrane between reality and dream. His prose is simple and strange simultaneously. He runs marathons and translates American literature, bringing Western influences into Japanese fiction while remaining distinctly Japanese. His books feel like waking from a dream you can’t quite remember.
