His first debut short novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, are the first strings that tie Murakami’s fantasy together. The stories are rich, captivating, and vivid. They transcend layers upon layers into the characteristic vitality and loneliness that Murakami never fails to bring page after page. The lives of the people permeate...

On Finding Strength in Simplicity and Simplicity in Strength: In Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood
The only way to love is to give to a kind of lif that brings bliss, melancholy, and a longing for the light at the end of a tunnel. We’re happier set free than we are caged. Figurative, of course, is the enclosure of our feelings and experiences that we become so intimate with....