Novelist as a Vocation
  • Published: 7 November 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529918359
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $35.00

Novelist as a Vocation

An exploration of a writer’s life from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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Thoughts and advice on the creative writing process from an international master of literature.

Words have power. Yet that power must be rooted in truth and justice. Words must never stand apart from those principles.

'You end this collection…vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again' Guardian

Readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his beautifully surreal worlds will be fascinated by this highly personal look at the craft of writing.

In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author shares with readers what he thinks about being a novelist; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.

'Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers' New York Times Book Review

'A fascinating glimpse of the peculiar writerly life' Sunday Times

** A TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES and NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR**
  • Published: 7 November 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529918359
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $35.00
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About the author

Haruki Murakami

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, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami’s unique and addictive fictional universe.

Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring Murakami’s place as one of the world’s most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

portrait photo of Haruki Murakami

Also by Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
A Wild Sheep Chase
Dance Dance Dance
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Desire
Birthday Girl
South of the Border, West of the Sun
See all

Praise for Novelist as a Vocation

One of the most influential novelists of his generation.

Observer

A true original

The Times

A master storyteller

Sunday Times

Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers

New York Times Book Review

It's safe to say there is no one like Murakami

Literary Review

Murakami is one of the best writers around

Time Out, on Norwegian Wood

One of the most read authors around the world... You end this collection of beautiful essays vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again.

Guardian, *Book of the Day*

At any moment on our planet there are at most a few dozen novelists working with great power, for a broad audience, with the material of consciousness, which is what the novel is so uniquely good at handling, how it feels to be inside us, what it means, the devastations and beauties it brings. Murakami is one of them.

New York Times Book Review

'The world's most popular cult novelist'

Guardian

Some of [Murakami's] best books are non-fiction: Underground, about the Tokyo sarin gas attack, and this year's Novelist as a Vocation, a book of essays about his life, writing method and the wellsprings of his extravagant imagination.

Richard Lloyd Parry, Books of the Year, New Statesman

A quirky, chatty collection of essays by the award-winning Japanese novelist... this charming collection opens up much of the Japanese master's thinking on a life of luck, hard work, and joy in his long vocation as a novelist.

Irish Independent

Intriguing glimpses inside the singular mind of Murakami

Sean O’Hagan, Observer

A fascinating glimpse of the peculiar writerly life

Sunday Times *Books of the Year*

Murakami's... latest offering, Novelist As A Vocation... offers a rare glimpse into his thoughts on writing... There's something magnetic that draws you into the narrative, so by the time the last page is turned, you're invested more than you realised

UK Press Syndication

Every creative person should read this short book. No rules are laid down, but for those with an open mind there are hints galore and the occasional precept.

Literary Review

[The] 11 essays here… deal with all the things that you’d like to ask [Murakami]…in the highly unlikely event that you were able to corner him at a book-signing session… You end this collection of beautiful essays vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again

Guardian