Haruki Murakami

Biography

Wire of a professor of Japanese literature, he chooses the Greek tragedy and wishes to become scenario writer of cinema, without having still anything to tell.

After its academic works, it is during eight years person in charge of a bar of Jazz to Tokyo which is called Peter Cat. Haruki remains one impassioned of the cats, his/her only true friends during a solitary childhood, this friendship explains the invariable presence of this animal in its literature.

This experiment nourishes it without its knowledge and its first novel Écoute the song of the wind enables him to write, published with the Japan in 1979, for which it receives the Prix Gunzo.

Once its fame established after several novels with success, it leaves food abroad: first of all in the south of Europe (Italy and Greece) then to the the United States. He teaches the Japanese literature at the university of Princeton (fatherland of Scott Fitzgerald).

He returns to live with the Japan in 1995, marked by the earthquake of Kobe and the attack with the gas sarin of the Aum sect in the subway of Tokyo. These tragedies inspire the collection of news After the earthquake .

Haruki Murakami is also translator in Japanese several Anglo-Saxon writers (among whom Scott Fitzgerald, John Irving or Raymond Carver, of which he declares, with his death which has occurred in 1987: “Raymond Carver was without the slightest doubt, the most important professor of my existence like my larger friend in literature”). Murakami is also a large amateur of Jazz to which many references are made in its novels.

Its writings (Romance S or New S) are frequently Fantastique S, anchored in an everyday life which, subtly, leaves the rails of normality. Having lived in the south of the Europe (Greece, Italy) then to the the United States, the Western influence is rather perceptible in its works. That made of him a writer more international than of others with references of the world popular culture while keeping one lived Japanese contemporary to his characters.

He claims that it is by looking at a match of Baseball (very popular sport with the Japan) that he had the idea to write its first novel: Listening the voice of the wind , 1 part of " The trilogy of the rat".

The works of Murakami reveal a very refreshing form of surrealism which, while being based on a melancholic person daily banality, manage to form original accounts. He uses this idea of the bond which connects in the Asian thought (Bouddhisme, Shintoïsme) all the events and the beings. An action causes even in a remote and indirect way a reaction in the moment, in reality or elsewhere, in another world that Murakami can return perfectly.

With the wire of his novels, one finds astonishing characters such as the Man Sheep or Colonel Sanders. The human heart is peeled there, in its most intimate recesses sometimes, so that the reader is carried for a voyage in him even, but within a framework sometimes mild nutter.

The throbbing melancholy of Murakami and its social analyzes in half dyed point out sometimes a certain number of names of the Japanese literature , such as Sōseki. One finds long thoughts of pulled about beings there, in the search of their identity and approaching the existence with sometimes a certain anxiety.

To note, the exit in July 2006 of a collection of old and new news under the title Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman , available for the moment only in English.

Haruki Murakami received the title of Honorary doctor of the Université of Liege on September 18th, 2007.

Partial bibliography

(French titles, dates of publication in Japan even in France and possible received prices)

the trilogy of the Rat:

Listening the voice of the wind - 風の歌を聴け (Kaze No ATU wo kike), 1979, (Gunzo Price)
Pinball 1973 - 1973 年のピンボール (1973-nen No pinbōru) (1980)
the Race with the wild sheep - 羊をめぐる冒険 (Hitsuji wo meguru bōken) (1982, Nomā price for the French translation of Patrick Of Your)

End of time - 世界の終わりとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド (Sekai No owari to hâdoboirudo wandārando) (1985, Price Tanizaki; in French 1992, the Threshold)
Dance, dance, dance - ダンス・ダンス・ダンス (Dansu dansu dansu) (1988) (in French 1995, the Threshold) - continuation of the Race to the wild sheep
In the south of the border, the west of the sun - 国境の南、太陽の西 (Kokkyō No minami, taiyō No nishi) (1992) (in French: 1995 10/18 n°3499)
the elephant evaporates (collection of news) - 象の消滅 (Zō No shōmetsu) (in French 1998, the Threshold)
Chroniques of the bird with spring - ねじまき鳥クロニクル (Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru) (1994 and 1995)
the Ballade of impossible the - ノルウェイの森 (Noruwei No mori) (1987) (in French 1994, the Threshold)
Lovers of the Sputnik - スプートニクの恋人 (Spūtoniku No koibito) (1999) (Belfond 2003 and 10/18 n°3684)
After the earthquake - 神の子どもたちはみな踊る (Kami No kodomo-tachi wa mined odoru) (2002) (Edition 10/18 n°3379, 2002) (the original title means: All the children of God can dance , title of the third news of the collection which counts six of them)
Kafka at the seaside/Kafka on the shore (according to the translation) - 海辺のカフカ (Umibe No Kafuka) (September 2002 for the Japanese version. January 2006 for the French version) (Price World Fantasy 2006)
the passage of the night - After Dark (Kodansha, Tokyo 2004 for the Japanese version. Belfond January 2007 for the French version).

See too

External bonds and documents

Hanami Web - Haruki Murakami
Official site D '''' Haruki Murakami '''
After the Quake, Reviewed The Open Critic

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