Haruki Murakami

Japanese · b. 1949

Haruki Murakami ran a Tokyo jazz bar before deciding, at 29 during a baseball game, that he could write a novel — and became the world's most widely read Japanese author. His surreal, melancholy fiction, from Norwegian Wood to Kafka on the Shore, blends pop culture, deep loneliness, and quiet magic into a style so distinctive it spawned an adjective.