Murakami, Haruki 1949-

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
95 editions published between 2009 and 2013 in 22 languages and held by 3,653 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
An ode to George Orwell's "1984" told in alternating male and female voices relates the stories of Aomame, an assassin for a secret organization who discovers that she has been transported to an alternate reality, and Tengo, a mathematics lecturer and novice writer

After dark by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
67 editions published between 2004 and 2013 in 7 languages and held by 2,918 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Two sisters--Eri, a fashion model sleeping her way to oblivion, and Mari, a young student--form the center of a novel that documents a series of encounters--with a jazz trombonist, the manager of a "love hotel" and her maid staff, and a Chinese prostitute brutalized by a businessman client--in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn

Kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
42 editions published between 2002 and 2014 in English and held by 2,850 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle-yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own

The wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
47 editions published between 1997 and 2013 in English and held by 2,562 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
While searching for his missing wife, Japanese lawyer Toru Okada has strange experiences and meets strange characters. A woman wants phone sex, a man describes wartime torture, he finds himself at the bottom of a well. Part detective story, part philosophical meditation

Norwegian wood by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
66 editions published between 1987 and 2014 in 9 languages and held by 2,250 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event. Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman."-- Cover

A wild sheep chase by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
44 editions published between 1989 and 2013 in English and held by 1,852 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
It begins simply enough: A twenty-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend, and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company's advertisement. What he doesn₂t realize is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our hero from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan, where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself

Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world : a novel by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
26 editions published between 1991 and 2013 in English and Undetermined and held by 1,622 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
Translated from the Japanese by: Alfred Birnbaum.Tranlation of: "Sekai no owari to hado-boirudo wandarando"

After the quake : stories by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
24 editions published between 2002 and 2013 in English and held by 1,458 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
A collection of stories inspired by the January 1995 Kobe earthquake and the poison gas subway attacks two months later takes place between the two disasters and follows the experiences of people who found their normal lives undone by surreal events

The sputnik sweetheart : a novel by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
39 editions published between 2001 and 2013 in 3 languages and held by 1,428 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
The scenario is as simple as it is uncomfortable: a college student falls in love (once and for all, despite everything that transpires afterward) with a classmate whose devotion to Kerouac and an untidy writerly life precludes any personal commitments -- until she meets a considerably older and far more sophisticated businesswoman. It is through this wormhole that she enters Murakami's surreal yet humane universe, to which she serves as guide both for us and for her frustrated suitor, now a teacher. In the course of her travels from parochial Japan through Europe and ultimately to an island off the coast of Greece, she disappears without a trace, leaving only lineaments of her fate: computer accounts of bizarre events and stories within stories. The teacher, summoned to assist in the search for her, experiences his own ominous, haunting visions, which lead him nowhere but home to Japan -- and there, under the expanse of deep space and the still-orbiting Sputnik, he finally achieves a true understanding of his beloved

South of the border, west of the sun by Haruki Murakami ( Book )
26 editions published between 1998 and 2013 in English and Undetermined and held by 1,405 WorldCat member libraries worldwide
A Japanese novel on a married businessman who has an affair with the girl of his youth. Hajime's relationship with Shimamoto had always been chaste, now they both make up for it--25 years later. By the author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle