OUIL504 - About the Author - Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami was born January 1949 in Japan during the Post WW2 Baby Boom
His best selling books have sold millions of copies and have been translated into over 50 languages

Haruki is a serious marathon runner and triathlon enthusiast, although he didn't start until he was 33. He discusses his relationship with running in his 2008 memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

He began writing fiction when he was 29, before that he ran a jazz club and didn't consider himself to be a creative person.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/09/29/reference/murakami-titan-of-postwar-literature/

"Over a career spanning 30 years, he has illustrated the apathy and ennui enveloping postwar Japan through sometimes wildly fantastic storytelling with surreal twists and turns, sprinkled with elements of Western philosophy and psychology"

Murakami’s stories are characterized by their often humorous dialogue and surreal plot turns, usually involving heavy usage of metaphors and frequent references to aspects of American and European culture.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/harukimurakami

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/13/haruki-murakami-interview-colorless-tsukur-tazaki-and-his-years-of-pilgrimage
"Murakami has often spoken of the theme of two dimensions, or realities, in his work: a normal, beautifully evoked everyday world, and a weirder supernatural realm, which may be accessed by sitting at the bottom of a well (as does the hero of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), or by taking the wrong emergency staircase off a city expressway (as in 1Q84). Sometimes dreams act as portals between these realities. In Tsukuru Tazaki there is a striking sex dream, at the climax of which the reader is not sure whether Tsukuru is still asleep or awake. Yet Murakami hardly ever remembers his own dreams."

His novels thus far have generally divided into two types. There are the overtly magical-realist romances (A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84), and the works on a smaller canvas, in which hints of the supernatural remain mostly beneath the mournful, mundane surface (South of the Border, West of the Sun; Sputnik Sweetheart). With its unresolved mysteries, tales-within-tales and maybe-dreams,
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I found this on Pinterest (artist in presentation) I don't particularly like this style, I think it's too simplistic, But I thought it would be nice to include something different.

I like the paper texture in the background of this image and the limited colour palette, the mixture of blues and greys.

Although this is very simple, I like the subtle hint of colour in the girls' cheeks and how that matches with the colour of the text at the bottom.

I like this illustration by Lizzy Stewart, again for the texture especially in the girls; clothes, but also because of the attention to small detail you can see in the hair and face;