New Murakami Novel Due Next Year

I didn’t care for his endless last work, “IQ84,” but I’m bringing you this item anyway: Following what has become customary hysteria, and seven-figure sales, at the release of a new Haruki Murakami (pictured) novel in Japan, his growing English-language fanbase can expect to read the translation of his latest next year. They might want to do something about the title, though. “Shikisai wo Motanai Tazaki Tsukuru to, Kare no Junrei no Toshi” (“Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage”) hinges around Tsukuru Tazaki, an isolated 36-year-old man struggling to overcome the trauma of rejection by his high-school friends years earlier. Like its title, the novel’s opening line might not sound like obvious bestseller material: “From July of his sophomore year at college to January next year, Tsukuru Tazaki was living while mostly thinking about dying.” But, like all of his books since the nostalgic love story “Norwegian Wood” captivated millions of readers in the 1980s, it has been an immediate commercial success.

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