Haruki Murakami

stats
Japanese novelist, short-story writer, and essayist.
Born: January 12, 1949

factoid #1
Owned a Jazz bar in Tokyo for seven years. Did not start writing fiction until his thirties, where according Murakami he was inspired at a baseball game to write his first novel, and proceeded to go home and do so.

influenced by
Kurt Vonnegut, Raymond Chandler, Richard Brautigan, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Honore de Balzac.

books
A Wild Sheep Chase (1982)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985)
Norwegian Wood (1987)
Dance Dance Dance (1988)
South of the Border; West of the Sun (1992)
The Elephant Vanishes: Stories (1993)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995)
Underground (1997)
Sputnik Sweetheart (2000)
After the Quake (2000)
Kafka on the Shore (2004)