MURAKAMI HARUKI

born Jan. 12, 1949, Kyoto, Japan Japanese postmodern novelist whose eccentric and whimsical novels made him the spokesman for a new generation. As a boy, Murakami rebelled against the study of Japanese literature, instead reading American paperbacks. This early and sustained interest is evident in the structure and nontraditional style of his own novels. His first internationally acclaimed novel, Hitsuji o meguru boken (1982; A Wild Sheep Chase), was part mystery, part comedy, and part fantasy. He won the prestigious Tanizaki Prize for the allegorical Sekai no owari to hadoboirudo wandarando (1985; The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World). Translated into Chinese, Korean, and other languages, as well as English, Murakami's novels and stories signaled the rise of a bold new generation of Japanese writers. His later novels include Dansu, dansu, dansu (1988; Dance, Dance, Dance), Kokkyo no minami, taiyo no nishi (1992; South of the Border, West of the Sun), Nejimaki tori kuronikuru (1995; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), and Suputoniku no koibito (1999; The Sputnik Sweetheart). Several of his short stories were published in The Elephant Vanishes (1993). He also wrote nonfiction, including Andaguraundo (1997; Underground), a series of interviews with victims of the AUM Shinrikyo terrorist attack in a Tokyo subway, and translated several stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald into Japanese.