IB English - The Elephant Vanishes (by Haruki Murakami): About the author: Haruki Murakami

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     Haruki Murakami is one of Japan’s most popular contemporary authors and a translator. He was born in January 12, 1949, in Kyoto, Japan. His parents taught him literature, so Murakami came to love literature naturally. He attended Tokyo’s Waseda University where he majored in theater arts. His first novel, Hear The Wind Sing (1979), was published when he was twenty-nine. Following this, he sold the jazz bar he ran with his wife and became a full-time writer. Then in 1997, Murakami’s English version of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles brought much of the attentions around the globe. This novel portrayed much of Murakami’s style and themes. The novel won the Yomiuri Prize.  In 2006, Murakami became the sixth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize and in January 2009 Murakami received the Jerusalem Prize.

    Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music, such as Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun. 

   Murakami is also a devoted runner.  He wrote about both writing and running in his piece What I Talk About When I Talk About Running in 2008.

    Murakami is known for blending of the fantastic realism in his novels, and it’s this magical realism, in combination with his natural and flowing use of language, which gives a dreamlike spice to the stories he write. 

   Murakami's works have been translated into over twenty languages. Tweleve novels,four short story collections and two works of non-fiction are currently available in English translation.

(Source of the article: Paris Review)

(Source of video: youtube)