Writer: Ioanna Balafa
If someone wants to convert his literary reading into a journey between the spiritual and material world, flirting with parallel universes, then the only thing he has to do is to devote some of his time in reading the excellent work of Haruki Murakami. He stands out for his unique ability to drift away his books’ heroes as well as his readers from the absurd into realistic by references to deep human emotions, to love, to the ultimate act of murder, to religious beliefs and organizations and to power enforcement including victimizers and victims. The author himself is looking for the painful truth and for hard answers as he believes that modern society fulls us with lies at the risk of losing our own reality.
If someone wants to convert his literary reading into a journey between the spiritual and material world, flirting with parallel universes, then the only thing he has to do is to devote some of his time in reading the excellent work of Haruki Murakami. He stands out for his unique ability to drift away his books’ heroes as well as his readers from the absurd into realistic by references to deep human emotions, to love, to the ultimate act of murder, to religious beliefs and organizations and to power enforcement including victimizers and victims. The author himself is looking for the painful truth and for hard answers as he believes that modern society fulls us with lies at the risk of losing our own reality.
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and he is considered as one of the greatest contemporary writers. He familiarized himself from an early age with the Japanese literature as his parents were involved in teaching but he also studied American literature and was influenced by western culture and music giving to his writings a unique blend of Japanese mystery and western influence. At the same time he taught at some of the largest universities in the United States.
He studied theater arts and shortly before the completion of his studies he opened a café jazz bar in Tokyo with his wife, Yoko. His personal jazz and classical musical tastes are reflected in most of his novels, both in the plot of the stories and into the titles. He loves Greece and one of his stories takes place in a Greek island and in Athens (Sputnik Sweetheart, 1999). He also loves running and jogging and he participated into the Athens Classic Marathon upside, in 1983 on behalf of a Japanese magazine.
He wrote his first book at the age of 29 claiming that the inspiration came quite suddenly while watching a baseball game in 1974. From 1982 he entirely devoted himself to writing. His most famous book is the "Norwegian Wood (1987)" which made him famous not only in Japan but throughout Asia, Europe and America. Moreover, his total work has been translated into 50 languages and himself has translated into Japanese, books of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, Raymond Carver and John Irving.
With at least twenty novels to his credit and been a stable candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 2006 he won the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize in 2009 as a complement to his already numerous awards. From "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” where metaphysical delusions and anxieties of modern Japan are disclosed and the achievement of self-knowledge through alienation, to the "After the quake" with stories about the violence of modern automatized world, Murakami plays with the fragile balance of the protagonists’ lives, highlighting the torrent of forces around us and trying continuously to “widen” Japan’s literary horizons.
In 2009 he returned with a stunning trilogy
titled 1Q84 which was completed in 2010 and that was the “hallmark” of his
enormous talent in a voluminous project of a worldwide success which is
indicative of the emotional nostalgia, fantasy, allegory and dream-poetic form
of his books, making the reader mixes fantasy with reality by creating true
fairytales about the mystery of life and the irrational and mysterious forces
of love, lust and sexuality.
The stories’ persons are explore their body’s
limits and reality as well, in an always changing world while they often fail
to identify the exact place and time. Suspense, revenge and music in a poetic
environment, in a revealing new universe full of risks, personal truths and of
everyone’s anticipation to meet with his self.
Unimaginable scenes and defusing sensations fascinate and redeem the narrative heroes and the readers through descriptions of cities that hide many truths and make us listen to the reading sounds of the elite jazz and classical music, experiencing Murakami’s reading as a fulfilled experience.
He has stated that for him writing is a consistent hobby and not a job and maybe that's why if someone spend some time on reading his books he soon finds that through the passion of descriptions Murakami has the power to make millions of readers to believe that in the end what triumphs is love and a spectacular cover of this planet’s deficiencies. Love that sometimes slips through our hands and other times comes to help us understand the hidden truths of ourselves. He penetrates deep into his heroes’ mentality by giving a multileveled reading aspect, but at the same time he manages to make it simple and enjoyable.
Murakami considers the ‘specific rate’ as writing’s most basic element, which has to flow effortlessly like a music melody, as himself believes that music gives wing to the imagination in order for him to achieve the desired harmony which supports the words’ sound. He freely improvises by learning to listen to his inner voices and silences.
Also, in his books the woman/the feminine is the dominant whose role is to guide the protagonists, firstly by approaching the male and at the same time Murakami showcases love and sexual life as a mental commitment which might heal and enliven the human imagination by leading to better personal paths but always respecting any kind of differences, of the other or of the other half.
When you complete a Murakami’s book, you try to "pull yourself together" after the spiritual commitment that his stories require and the requirement of getting rid once and for all reading taboos, having open mind and the mood for an internal foresighted personal research.
Unimaginable scenes and defusing sensations fascinate and redeem the narrative heroes and the readers through descriptions of cities that hide many truths and make us listen to the reading sounds of the elite jazz and classical music, experiencing Murakami’s reading as a fulfilled experience.
He has stated that for him writing is a consistent hobby and not a job and maybe that's why if someone spend some time on reading his books he soon finds that through the passion of descriptions Murakami has the power to make millions of readers to believe that in the end what triumphs is love and a spectacular cover of this planet’s deficiencies. Love that sometimes slips through our hands and other times comes to help us understand the hidden truths of ourselves. He penetrates deep into his heroes’ mentality by giving a multileveled reading aspect, but at the same time he manages to make it simple and enjoyable.
Murakami considers the ‘specific rate’ as writing’s most basic element, which has to flow effortlessly like a music melody, as himself believes that music gives wing to the imagination in order for him to achieve the desired harmony which supports the words’ sound. He freely improvises by learning to listen to his inner voices and silences.
Also, in his books the woman/the feminine is the dominant whose role is to guide the protagonists, firstly by approaching the male and at the same time Murakami showcases love and sexual life as a mental commitment which might heal and enliven the human imagination by leading to better personal paths but always respecting any kind of differences, of the other or of the other half.
When you complete a Murakami’s book, you try to "pull yourself together" after the spiritual commitment that his stories require and the requirement of getting rid once and for all reading taboos, having open mind and the mood for an internal foresighted personal research.
(published on www.tovivlio.net)
