Haruki Murakami is a Japanese novelist, short-story writer, essayist and translator, born in Kyoto in 1949 and raised in Kobe and Ashiya. He studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he became drawn to American hardboiled detective fiction, and he ran a small jazz bar with his wife for seven years. His first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won the Gunzo Prize for new writers in 1979.

He is known around the world for novels such as Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84, and for the nonfiction book Underground, which grew out of interviews with survivors of the Tokyo subway sarin attack. He also runs, writes essays about running, and works early each morning. He has said he prefers to leave things open rather than reach conclusions.

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