Diving into Murakami's World....

I started Haruki Murakami's "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" after a delightful read of Naipaul. The short stories collected here are not inter-connected like in previous volumes. The title story is supposed to be fragments of what at one point could have been part of "Norwegian Wood," Murakami's best novel. There's always this mysterious pitched to the stories. The ability to turn into the surreal is all Murakami's. This is something that could be a turn off for some people. A character might be lost in an abandoned building and all of a sudden be having a conversation with a talking sheep. But not all of Murakami's work is like that. I highly recommend "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," "Kafka on the Shore," and most definitely "Norwegian Wood."

I had an opportunity to meet Haruki Murakami and exchange some words with him in 1998. It was an unforgettable evening, really. He finally spoke about the elements of biography on "Norwegian Wood," something he had avoided for a long time.