Novelist As A Vocation (on Writing And Creativity)

By (author) Murakami, Haruki; Translated by Gabriel Philip; Translated by Goossen Ted
Description

A unique look at the craft of writing from a bestelling master of storytelling.

In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author and famously reclusive writer shares with readers what he thinks about being a novelist; his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.

Readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this highly personal look at the craft of writing.

''An insightful collection of essays on his work and methods... You end this collection of beautiful essays vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again'' Guardian

''Murakami is like a magician who explains what he''s doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers'' New York Times Book Review

''A fascinating glimpse of the peculiar writerly life'' Sunday Times

** A TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES and NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR**

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One of the most read authors around the world... You end this collection of beautiful essays vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again.
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A quirky, chatty collection of essays by the award-winning Japanese novelist... this charming collection opens up much of the Japanese master''s thinking on a life of luck, hard work, and joy in his long vocation as a novelist.
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Intriguing glimpses inside the singular mind of Murakami
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Some of [Murakami''s] best books are non-fiction: Underground, about the Tokyo sarin gas attack, and this year''s Novelist as a Vocation, a book of essays about his life, writing method and the wellsprings of his extravagant imagination.
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At any moment on our planet there are at most a few dozen novelists working with great power, for a broad audience, with the material of consciousness, which is what the novel is so uniquely good at handling, how it feels to be inside us, what it means, the devastations and beauties it brings. Murakami is one of them.
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It''s safe to say there is no one like Murakami
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A true original
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A master storyteller
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Murakami is like a magician who explains what he''s doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers
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One of the most influential novelists of his generation.
Biographical note

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami’s unique and addictive fictional universe.

Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non