The 10 most outstanding books by Haruki Murakami, winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature

Haruki Murakami debuted in literature with the novel “Hear the wind sing” (Listen to the song of the wind, 1979) and has just released in Japan “The City and its Uncertain Walls” (The city and its uncertain walls), the first long novel that publish in six years. Between both works, some of the author’s most outstanding books are the following ten:

“Tokyo blues” (1987).– This successful novel by the Japanese author begins when, in a European airport, a 37-year-old executive listens to an old Beatles song that takes him back to his youth, to the turbulent Tokyo of the sixties, where the characters debate among themselves. youthful hopes and the need to find a place in the world.

“Kafka on the shore” (2002).- Kafka Tamura leaves home on the day he turns fifteen and travels to the south of the country, to Takamatsu, where he will find refuge in a peculiar library that Satoru Nakata also arrives from Tokyo, who as a child, during the second war worldwide, he suffered a strange accident from which he left with sequelae and with difficulties to communicate, except with cats.

“1Q84” (2010).- In an evocation of 1984, a date with Orwellian echoes, Murakami reflects in this novel, which he divided into three volumes, the alteration lived by Aomame, a gym instructor, and Tengo, a mathematics teacher, since they are also, respectively, a murderess and an aspiring writer who has been commissioned to correct an enigmatic work.

“Men without women” (2014).– A book that brings together seven stories about isolation and loneliness that precede or follow a love relationship: men who have lost a woman or whose relationship has been marked by disagreements.

“Death and the Commander” (2019).- Divided into two volumes, this novel tells the story of a portrait painter of a certain prestige, who decides to take refuge in a place in the north of Japan after discovering his wife’s infidelity, retired from the bustling city and isolated in the old house of a famous painter, now admitted to a residence.

“Dance, dance, dance” (2013).- In March 1983, the young protagonist of this novel returns to the Hotel Delfín, where years ago he spent a week with a mysterious woman who unexpectedly disappeared from his side. Upon his arrival, he discovers that the hotel has been demolished and that another, modern and luxurious one, is being built in its place, but during his stay he meets characters wrapped in unreality.

“Sputnik, my love” (2002).- A story of loneliness and crossed loves with three characters: the narrator, a young primary school teacher who is in love with Sumire, who only wants to be a novelist and meets a married woman who embarks on a trip to Europe.

“Music, only music” (2020).- A book that collects the conversations between Murakami and his friend Seiji Ozawa, former director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, about the music of Brahms and Beethoven, Bartok and Mahler, about orchestra conductors like Leonard Bernstein and soloists like Glenn Gould.

“Underground” (2014).- Haruki Murakami interviews the victims who survived the sarin gas attack that occurred in the Tokyo subway in March 1995, which caused 11 deaths and thousands of injuries, in addition to the testimonies of the members of the sect who participated in that attack and its possible motives.

“After the earthquake” (2013).- The magnitude of the earthquake that devastated the Japanese city of Kobe in 1995, and which claimed more than five thousand lives, moved Murakami to write six stories that take place shortly after the tragedy.