First Person Singular

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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & EDITORS’ CHOICE 
A riveting new collection of short stories from the beloved, internationally acclaimed Haruki Murakami.These eight stories, all told in the first person, showcase Haruki Murakami’s reality-bending skills at their very finest. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios and imaginary jazz albums, together these tales challenge the boundary between the mind and the real world. Here we encounter men having a beer with a talking monkey, analyzing tanka poems written by a former lover, and in the throes of Beatlemania.  And, occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself. Philosophical and mysterious, the stories in First Person Singular all touch beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory . . . with a signature Murakami twist. AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A New York Times Editors’ Choice/Staff Pick“Murakami’s engrossing collection offers a crash course in his singular style and vision, blending passion for music and baseball and nostalgia for youth with portrayals of young love and moments of magical realism. . . . Murakami’s gift for evocative, opaque magical realism shines. . . . These shimmering stories are testament to Murakami’s talent and enduring creativity.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“First Person Singular will satisfy [Murakami’s] fans and serve as a fine introduction to neophytes, echoing many of the uncanny scenarios of his earlier work. . . . These eight stories, all told in first person, are unapologetically Murakami . . . [and] will remind readers why Murakami’s work is singular.” —The Washington Post“Whether in his epic-scale novels or in his shorter works, much of Murakami’s appeal has always come from the beguiling way in which his characters react to wildly fantastical events in the most matter-of-fact manner, ever ready to accept how the twists and turns of everyday life can blend into more audacious alternate realities. . . . The glue that holds together Murakami’s blending realities—in these stories and, indeed, in all of his fiction—is always the narrator’s love for something (a woman, a song, a baseball team, a moment in the past) that is both life-giving and deeply melancholic. Masterful short fiction.” —Booklist (starred review)
“A new collection of stories from the master of the strange, enigmatic twist of plot. . . . Music is never far from a Murakami yarn, though always with an unexpected turn. . . . An essential addition to any Murakami fan’s library.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Haruki Murakami often seems most at home in his short-story collections, cycling through his various fixations unburdened by the narrative mechanics of his novels. First Person Singular is no exception, offering ruminations on the fickleness of memory while fleeting from baseball to Beatlemania to a Kafka-inspired talking monkey.” —Vulture“Murakami, ever droll, has put together eight stories told through the first-person singular perspective. But while it’s a conceit, in the hands of Murakami, it’s also the means to inspiring ends, thanks to its memorable voices—including a talking monkey who walks into a spa.” —The Washington Post
“Stunning. . . . The pieces here tap the author’s infatuations with the Beatles and Mozart, baseball and poetry, transgressive sex and fleeting romance, served up with dollops of American pop culture. It’s all here, narrated in a range of voices, from deadpan poet to magical realist to song critic. . . . Murakami’s encyclopedic knowledge of music surges to the fore, echoed in vivid imagery. . . . His focus on technique and innovation is also evident. . . . First Person Singular takes us not only through Murakami’s imagination but also his career, teasing out evergreen themes while offering fresh spins on the meaning of ‘I,’ an eye that’s both observer and participant in the stories of others.” —Oprah Daily
“A collection of eight new short stories by Haruki Murakami walks a fine line between being about a world we know and one we can only imagine while also playing with notions of what makes fiction and what can be considered memoir. Experimental? Maybe, but worth the risk from one of our most reliably thought-provoking and enjoyable writers.” —Town & Country
“Brilliant. . . . One can feel him easing up in the eight stories collected in First Person Singular, allowing his own voice . . . to enter the narratives, creating a confessional tone that reminded me of Alice Munro’s late work.” —The New York Times Book Review
“First Person Singular . . . marks a blazing and brilliant return to form. . . . Here we have a taut and tight, suspenseful and spellbinding, witty and wonderful group of eight stories. . . . There isn’t a weak one in the bunch. The stories echo with Murakami’s preoccupations. . . . This mesmerizing collection would make a superb introduction to Murakami for anyone who hasn’t yet fallen under his spell; his legion of devoted fans will gobble it up and beg for more.” —The Boston Globe
“Haruki Murakami is a master of the mesmerizing head-scratcher. His fiction, whether long or short, highlights life’s essential strangeness and unfathomability. . . . It’s an enjoyable read that goes down easily. . . . Murakami’s plainspoken short stories, like his more complex novels, raise existential questions about perception, memory, and the meaning of it all—though he’s the opposite of heavy-handed. . . . [A] winning collection.” —NPR
“These stories are unmistakably Murakami’s for the way they traffic in his signature themes of time and memory, nostalgia and young love . . . each one [story] has insights that remain with you long after they are done.” —The Times (UK)
“First Person Singular is a patch of intense variety and colour. . . . Murakami’s protagonists tend to be introspective, ordinary men who find themselves confronted by women and unusual situations. It is as much their reactions to events as the events themselves that make his books so brilliant.” —Evening Standard“You can’t have a conversation about literary fiction of the past 50 years without mentioning Haruki Murakami, and First Person Singular reminds us why.” —BookPage
“The hallmarks of Haruki Murakami’s longer fiction are all here; an enigmatic eeriness which hints at the supernatural in everyday situations, a love of jazz and baseball, and the nourishing nostalgia of pop music.” —Daily Mail“Murakami has a gift for reflecting on the philosophical, mixing the everyday with the surreal. Whether he’s laughing at absurdity or lamenting a lost love, there is a meditative quality to his writing—the words are so serene and comforting, it feels like the literary equivalent of slipping under a warm blanket on a lazy Sunday afternoon. . . . Sure to satisfy both hard core Murakami fans and those looking for an introduction to his work.” —The Independent
“[Murakami] doesn’t disappoint in his latest collection. . . . He’s first and foremost a remarkably accessible storyteller. His books are an intimate invitation to revel in his perpetually unpredictable, yet remarkably convincing, imagination. . . . [He] writes with such assurance as to turn the implausible credible, the outlandish engrossing. Each story entralls. . . . Readers are left wanting more.” —The Christian Science Monitor  HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honours is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera and V. S. Naipaul. Translated by Philip Gabriel. US