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 deepened his knowledge of Western and especially American literature, and in less than ten years following his 1979 debut he has initiated a revolution in the style of Japanese fiction by nurturing new, urban, cosmopolitan, and distinctly American-flavored tastes in Japanese writing. Dissatisfied with his initial attempts at fiction until he tried writing in English and translating his work back into Japanese, Murakami has created an original, immediately recognizable style marked by humor, lightness, simplicity, and clarity, with bold, imaginative leaps and startling juxtapositions of images. Such stylistic features certify his novels and stories as products of a new sensibility liberated from the ghosts of World War II and far...