{"id":11139,"date":"2015-10-16T06:30:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T13:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=11139"},"modified":"2015-10-05T14:35:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T21:35:46","slug":"lit-matters-haruki-murakamis-fusion-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/10\/16\/lit-matters-haruki-murakamis-fusion-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Lit Matters<\/em>: Haruki Murakami\u2019s fusion fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/kafka-on-the-shore-002.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-11140\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/kafka-on-the-shore-002-189x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"189\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/kafka-on-the-shore-002-189x300.jpg 189w, https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/kafka-on-the-shore-002.jpg 441w, https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/kafka-on-the-shore-002-300x476.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/kafka-on-the-shore-002-180x286.jpg 180w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 189px) 100vw, 189px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake,\u201d Japanese author Haruki Murakami once said.<\/p>\n<p>Murakami\u2019s books, often featuring a dream-like blend of realism and surrealism, have sold millions of copies worldwide and made Murakami a literary superstar in his native Japan.<\/p>\n<p>But the literary life came as a surprise to Murakami.<\/p>\n<p>Growing up in Japan in the \u201960s, he felt stifled by the culture of the post-war era. Instead of reading the Japanese literature of his father (who was a lit teacher), he listened to jazz and read western fiction, falling in love with J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Franz Kafka, and American detective fiction.<\/p>\n<p>Murakami\u2019s distinctive style shows the influence of this cultural fusion: with uncanny skill he blends a highly realistic style with elements of the surreal and the absurd, and he mixes genres such as hard-boiled detective fiction with Shakespearean romance.<\/p>\n<p>In<i> Kafka on the Shore<\/i>, an old man who can talk to cats sets off to find a mysterious stone that he knows nothing about, and a young runaway boy lives in a library and falls in love with a ghost. But the symbolic elements are carefully chosen so that they fit alongside the characters without a bump. They are the innermost hopes and desires of the characters, and their presence in the world of the novel only enhances the reader\u2019s empathy with the characters and their struggles.<\/p>\n<p>Murakami adds surrealistic elements to more closely mimic the tangled reality we experience in our daily lives. \u201cI always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions,\u201d he once said. \u201cI would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>Haruki Murakami must-read: <\/b><i>Kafka on the Shore<br \/>\n<\/i>(Lansdowne library code: PL 856 U673 K33)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake,\u201d Japanese author Haruki Murakami once said. Murakami\u2019s books, often featuring a dream-like blend of realism and surrealism, have sold millions of copies worldwide and made Murakami a literary superstar in his native Japan. But the literary life came as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-october-7-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11141,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11139\/revisions\/11141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}