The ten best Haruki Murakami books

Matthew Carl Strecher is professor of Japanese language, literature, and culture at Winona State University. He is the author of Dances with Sheep: The Quest for Identity in the Fiction of Haruki Murakami, Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Reader’s Guide, and The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami.

One title on Strecher's list of the ten best Haruki Murakami books, as shared at Publishers Weekly:

Norwegian Wood

Another “Naoko”—or is it the same one?—forms the center of this work, a retrospective look at Watanabe Tōru’s tragic relationship with a mentally disturbed young woman who hears the voice of “Kizuki”—her dead lover and soul mate—calling to her from the “other world.” Tōru spends part of the story trying to prevent her from following this voice, and part of it struggling with his desire for “Midori,” the vibrant “other woman” in the novel.

Read about the other books on the list.

Norwegian Wood is among Melissa Albert's five best books that inspire great mix tapes and Julith Jedamus' top ten Japanese novels.

--Marshal Zeringue