Haruki Murakami is one of the few Japanese authors who has managed to captivate the world with his unique literary formula, in his books aspects as basic as society, fear or romantic disappointments are transformed with surrealism, through a wide variety of symbology and wonderful dream. Epiphanies. Murakami is a very successful sales author and, at the same time, an eternal Candidate for the Nobel Prize.
When someone dives into one of your books for the first time, something fascinating happens, there is a clear feeling that each of these lines is written for themselves and succeeds because it has the power to evoke nostalgia for things that, at some point we wanted to live and could not, few authors are able to touch our unconscious universe in such a simple way to move us.
- Murakami always places an observer as the protagonist.
- Is this person who is intrigued to observe what surrounds him: a strange phone call.
- A cat that is lost.
- A portal to another dimension in which a love disappears?The fantastic interacts with everyday life.
- But without touching the magical realism of García Márquez.
- Because in his works we appreciate everyday life as if we were living a playful dream.
As Haruki Murakami himself says, writing is a way of dreaming. Revasser. In its pages are opened several portals that allow us to enter into another type of consciousness, in a world of underground wells, of animals that become prophets, of sexuality almost always acts as an act of exorcism.
Murakami is David Lynch of Letters, and does this make his art unique to some and sublime to others?
“I don’t want you to understand my metaphors, nor the symbolism of the play, I want you to feel like in good jazz shows, when your feet can’t stop moving under the chairs and give rhythm. ” – H. Murakami –
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949. One of the advantages he had as a child was undoubtedly the cultural openness given to him by his parents, both professors of literature, and as a child he had access to American books and music. He grew up with the most classic novels in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, and was passionate about jazz from a young age.
He studied literature at Waseda University (Soudai), but during those years as a student he barely attended classes, his life, mostly outside traditional Japanese standards, was oriented towards music and this night world in the bars of big cities. at a record store and then opened the Peter Cat jazz bar in Kokubunji, Tokyo.
It was in college that he met the woman who would become his wife, Yoko, with whom he shared his taste for music and with whom he ran this bar until the early 1980s. It was in this decade that Murakami’s first publications appeared in the publishing house. However, his great success came in 1986 with Norwegian Wood (Tokyo blues). Right now, a new stage begins: leave Japan to live in Europe and the United States.
It was in 1995 that Haruki Murakami decided to temporarily return to Japan, a decision that was made after two very serious events: the Kobe earthquake and the sarin gas attack by the religious group Shinrikyo, both disasters that later inspired works known as Underground (1997 ) and After the earthquake (2000).
Later will come works such as My Dear Sputnik, a book in which he investigates the nature of affection while tells the story of the disappearance of Sumire, a young novelist, and novels such as Kafka by the Sea (2002). After Nightfall (2004) or 1Q84 (2009) are examples of an inventiveness that navigates these dystopian universes from which the reader never comes out unscathed.
Its symbolisms, reflexes and surrealism catch and confuse us at the same time, few authors have been able to create such a particular style capable of fascinating so many millions of readers, in addition, Haruki Murakami is one of the most successful sales. authors, someone who, year after year, continues to be denied the Nobel Prize.
In addition, it is worth noting his work as a translator. These are translations from Japanese to English by authors he considers his teachers: Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Irving. C a big fan of cats and sports. Take part in marathons and triathlon competitions.
Murakami recently returned to the realm of fiction with The Assassination of the Commander. This immense novel in two volumes, almost titanic, returns us to the themes present in his works: love, loneliness, work?Once again, we find his usual style, with alternate universes, enigmatic figures and fertile ground for the most intense emotions.
Publishers love it. There’s no one like Murakami, they say. However, in his country, he is considered too inclined an outsider to American culture; getting to the point of seeing him as a “pop” writer. However, in the west, Murakami still loves us. And he does it because it inspires devotion, because reading his novels is, as Churchill would say, an enigma within a mystery. It makes us strange and fascinates us at the same time.
Currently, his books have been translated into 42 languages. In fact, it was a bestseller in South Korea and China. This ability to intertwine the empirical with sleep, this originality to create stories with supernatural elements is something that seems to stop millions of readers, because, despite the strangeness of their symbolism, we all identify with many of these images, with these realities fed by affections, fears and loneliness.
We do not know if he will finally receive the Nobel Prize, however, Haruki Murakami has conquered the world with his style, with his unique and unique brand, for which he has already largely won what every writer wants: the admiration of his readers. .