About Murakami: A fan's guide to his whimsical world.

 About Murakami.

Next week, my book club is going to have a Haruki Murakami Meet. Where my fellow club member and me, we have been trying to make people read and meet our favourite author’s works. The biggest struggle we faced was the confusion people have about him and the question: Which book to begin with?

Now, the most common answer fellow Harukist [Fans of Murakami] have given over the years has been Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood. An answer I strictly disagree with, because these two books have done more damage to the cult of Murakami than any other book, like Hundred years of Solitude has to the realm of Magical Realism. In our excitement to make people love Murakami, we end up making them pick the hardest book!

Our innate tendency for the best; best food, the best clothes, the finest wine, and the most aesthetically pleasing cinemas, doesn’t work in certain aspects. Reading is an act of familiarizing, reading Murakami’s works is that very act of familiarizing.

Kafka On the Shore is one of the toughest books by my darling author and Norwegian Wood is the book with least Murakami eccentricities in it. This is not an attempt to keep you away from the books, but this is an effort to make all those people pick up Murakami’s books because they found Kafka on the Shore too complicated, too tough, too confusing and end up labeling it as boring, and Norwegian Wood too teenage romantic. I think before we leap for the best we need to taste the good and better books by the author. Another request would be to stay away from Guardian’s review of Murakami Books, they have special sour-spots for extremely popular writers.

So how to navigate an author’s work whose name is more popular than his book titles? Here is a list which will help you I think, it’s my own reading list that I have perfected over the months to motivate people into reading his works. I think before picking up Kafka on the Shore one should read any of the three from this list.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: The first short story collection, each story has essential Murakami themes, dead boyfriends, crazy marriages, cats, jazz music, parallel universes and his twisted version of soulmates. Three of the short stories are the basis of his three popular novels, Sputnik Sweethearts, Norwegian Wood, 1Q84.

After Dark, and After the Quake: Two of my favourite short books, often underappreciated and mistaken to be part of a trilogy. Both are extremely humorous, written in small short crisp chapters, and the narration surreal to the point of bringing actual tragedies into it.

South of the Border, West of the Sun: Here we have another book that is quintessentially Murakami, it’s about star-crossed childhood sweethearts, infidelity, jazz music, vanishing characters and multi-plane existentialism. This is a short book and the ending leaves with an ache so bad.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A book that defines the idea of marriage in his written universe. And it has missing cats, vanishing wife, and murder, and incest and strange sexual intimacy which is often off-putting when first encountered in Kafka On the Shore. This book is big and demands complete attention.

Hardboiled Wonderland and The End Of the World: Almost feels like two novels are running parallel when one reaches the climax of both the stories is when we realize how well he develops the parallel universes! How he plays with Conrad’s self and other and literally pulls of the Kafkaesque world through metaphysical Sci-fi.

1Q84: For the romantics, this is an epic love story of Tengo and Aomame, a writer and an assassin, spread across parallel-earths in the year 1984. One of the earth has two moons and there are forces who are only six inches tall but they want our lovers to stay apart. It has one of the best examples of adaptation of Japanese narrative techniques and blending them with western literary styles: when your thoughts become so powerful and don’t let you live in peace, they take their own forms. This is also the pet theme of his second last novel Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

And a list of things to expect in his books: Repetition of actions, events, scenes and the following; Cats, Ear fetish, Mundane everyday chores, Vanishing characters, weird sex, infidelity, overwhelming musical information, dry wells, unique names, random history, murder, parallel universe, Queer characters with beautiful fingers, sharp pencils, pasta and cucumber and yogurt, obsession with Gatsby, ableism, mysterious teenagers and really disinterested nameless protagonists.

I hope this is helpful.