Murakami Haruki is an important figure in contemporary Japanese letters for his extensive translations from American fiction, and the enormous popularity of his own fiction has drawn attention to his work as a translator. His translation work has also de...

"I feel like a character in a novel," Bill Clinton told his aide, Sidney Blumenthal, almost a year ago. The novel he cited was Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" about the Moscow show trials of the 1930s. The parallels are obvious, if not disingenuous....

"So put aside your Captain Crunch decoder ring," recommends the Central Intelligence Agency, "for the moment." This is on the Internet site of the CIA's legal department. It's part of a pitch for recruits so startlingly moronic -- even as an attempt at adorable...

Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel. Alfred A. Knopf, 436 pages, $25.95.This is the way these things happen, don't ask why. Nakata has a mind that works simply, even if he's not exactly a simpleton. He forgets...

Back when summer actually meant a few months of relaxing and down time to New Yorkers, one of the most treasured rituals was the weekly trip to the neighborhood bookstore, to choose a new book (or stack of books) to keep one company at the...