(FREE Limited Enamel Pin*) Novelist as a Vocation: An exploration of a writer’s life by Haruki Murakami

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller--and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

"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

Aspiring writers and readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this engaging book from the internationally best-selling author. Haruki Murakami now shares with readers 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.

Here are the personal details of a life devoted to craft: the initial moment at a Yakult Swallows baseball game, when he suddenly knew he could write a novel; the importance of memory, what he calls a writer's "mental chest of drawers"; the necessity of loneliness, patience, and his daily running routine; the seminal role a carrier pigeon played in his career and more.

Review

Named one of the best books of the year by Esquire, Open the Magazine

"[A] very personal guide to fiction writing peppered with biography and opinion, contains a handful of strange, and strangely revealing, moments...Novelist As a Vocation is a series of intriguing glimpses inside the singular mind of Murakami" --Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian

★ "Murakami has written 14 acclaimed novels, including Hear the Wind Sing, Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, and his best-selling IQ84; dozens of short stories; and over a dozen books of essays and other nonfiction...Novelist is indeed his true vocation, and in this collection of 11 interconnected essays, he tells would-be fiction writers, struggling novelists, and his many devoted readers about the path he's followed and the ideas and thoughts he's had in the process...Although this is a concrete and practical guide, as Murakami intended, it is also a fascinating personal and professional memoir." --Marcia Welsh, Library Journal (starred review)

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvill Secker; 1st edition (8 Nov. 2022)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1911215388

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1911215387

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.8 x 2.5 x 22.2 cm

About the Author

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine 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, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.

In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.