Haruki Murakami

So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that’s stolen from us – that’s snatched right out of our hands – even if we are left completely changed people with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to our allotted span of time, bidding farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.

– Haruki Murakami, “Sputnik Sweetheart”.

If you still have not discovered Haruki Murakami, I recommend you do so. His writing is refreshing, strange, empathetic, and yet so very easy to read. So many times I dream of reading “Norwegian Wood” again for the first time. It has finally been translated into Spanish under the title “Tokio Blues”. Don’t ask me why the publishers do not feel that Spanish people are sufficiently intelligent to buy a book named after a Beatles’ song that isn’t very well known. “I once had a girl or should I say she once had me . . . isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood”.

I would also recommend the more dense Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Sputnik Sweetheart or Dance, Dance, Dance.