Haruki Murakami is a contemporary Japanese writer. Murakami has been translated into 50 languages and his best-selling books have sold millions of copies. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards, both in Japan and internationally, including the World Fantasy Award and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, while his oeuvre received among others the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. Murakami's most notable works include A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84. He has also translated a number of English works into Japanese, from Raymond Carver to J. D. Salinger. Murakami's fiction, at first criticized by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese, was influenced by Western writers from Chandler to Vonnegut by way of Brautigan. It is frequently surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a Kafkaesque rendition of the "recurrent themes of alienation and loneliness" he weaves into his narratives. He is also considered an important figure in postmodern literature. [More at Wikipedia]

January 12th, 1949 in Kyoto (Age 75)