Haruki Murakami

When queried about the meaning of his generally surrealistic stories, Haruki Murakami replied, “I’m very realistic. But when I write, I write weird.” That’s true enough, as the writer’s rabid cult of fans could attest. His new collection of twenty-five stories features, among other things, a shrinking elephant, an identity-stealing puddle of quicksand, and a variety of physically disabled characters. Murakami’s tales, with their diverse influences ranging from popular culture, Buddhism, western philosophy, and Jungian theory, are told with such shape-shifting fluidity that a reader often runs the risk of confusing their hallucinatory plots with the storylines of his own dreams.