> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 March 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099455448
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $27.99

Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words



REVISED AND UPDATED WITH NEW MATERIAL ON 1Q84

REVISED AND UPDATED WITH NEW MATERIAL ON 1Q84

As a young man, Haruki Murakami played records and mixed drinks at his Tokyo Jazz club, Peter Cat, then wrote at the kitchen table until the sun came up. He loves music of all kinds - jazz, classical, folk, rock - and has more than six thousand records at home. And when he writes, his words have a music all their own, much of it learned from jazz. Jay Rubin, a self-confessed fan, has written a book for other fans who want to know more about this reclusive writer. He reveals the autobiographical elements in Murakami's fiction, and explains how he developed a distinctive new style in Japanese writing. In tracing Murakami's career, he uses interviews he conducted with the author between 1993 and 2001, and draws on insights and observations gathered from over ten years of collaborating with Murakami on translations of his works.

  • Published: 1 March 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099455448
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $27.99

About the author

Jay Rubin

Jay Rubin is the author of Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State and Making Sense of Japanese, and he edited Modern Japanese Writers for the Scribner Writers Series. He has translated into English two novels by the Japanese writer Soseki Natsume, and also Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and after the quake.

Also by Jay Rubin

See all

Praise for Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words

Jay Rubin's engaging critical study of Haruki Murakami examines the complex intersection of the Japanese novelist's life...Rubin is a confident guide to this surreal world

Daily Telegraph

This genial guide to 'cool' Japanese author Haruki Murakami mimics the playfulness of his fictions...His intuitive 'critique' gets close to the spirit of his subject

Observer

a lively and eccentric new critical study

New York Times

A magical mystery tour through Murakami's spontaneous, improvised fictional world-Packed with bits of trivia about the author

Evening Standard