Happy Birthday, Haruki

Today is the birthday of one of our great living writers (our = humanity's), Haruki Murakami. He was born in Kyoto and grew up in Kobe, Japan, and has taught at Princeton and Tufts in the US, where he now lives. Last year he won the Kafka Award - the 2004 and 2005 Kafka winners went on to win the Nobel, and many think Murakawa will, too. His writing is humorous, nostalgic, magical, and often fierce, dealing with loss and sprinkled with sharp social observations. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore, his best novels, and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a collection of shorter fiction, are available in English (along with much more).