Some are powerfully entertaining, others just powerful. My own favorites are chosen on a “gut” level I liked these works because they awakened something in me as a reader, spoke to me about things that were already going on my mind, maybe only subconsciously. What is the nature of the individual self? What is the meaning of “happiness,” or “success,” in the global age? What is the soul, and how do we get one? Why are some people turned off by the structures of contemporary societies, and what alternatives do they have? These are just a few of the many issues Murakami addresses, and they affect us all. Murakami is a Japanese writer but he is also a “global” one, meaning that his works are best read not as expressions of Japanese culture, but as examinations of questions that concern all humanity. His heroes routinely journey into a metaphysical realm-the unconscious, the dreamscape, the land of the dead-to examine directly their memories of people and objects they have lost. His works are built around an almost obsessive urge to explore and understand the inner core of the human identity. Murakami Haruki is world-renowned as a novelist of magical realist fiction. Strecher ranks his favorite of the master's books. Matthew Carl Strecher is the author of three books on Haruki Murakami: 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 upcoming The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami.
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