Reality bends all the more acutely with lack of sleep in this stunning new novel from the master of the surreal. Murakami's previous collection of short stories "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" has sold over 40,000 copies in hardback and trade paperback, and won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. For his many acclaimed and wonderful novels, which include "Norwegian Wood", "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and "Kafka On The Shore", Murakami was recently awarded the Franz Kafka Award for 'exceptional literary criticism'. 'Cool, fluent and addictive' "Daily Telegraph" Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949. Following the publication of his first novel in Japanese in 1979, he sold the jazz bar he ran with his wife and became a full-time writer. It was with the publication of Norwegian Wood - which has to date sold more than 4 million copies in Japan alone - that the author was truly catapulted into the limelight. Known for his surrealistic world of mysterious (and often disappearing) women, cats, earlobes, wells, Western culture, music and quirky first-person narratives, he is now Japan's best-known novelist abroad. Nine novels, three short story collections and one work of non-fiction are currently available in English translation.