IQ84 and Norwegian Wood author Haruki Murakami is the 3/1 favourite to collect the Nobel Prize in Literature in October.
Global bestseller Haruki
Murakami Photo:
Rex
Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is the favourite to win this year’s Nobel
Prize in Literature, which will be announced at a ceremony in Sweden next month.
A perennial candidate for the prize and bookmaker’s favourite in 2012,
Murakami is the most globally popular of the principal contenders for the this
year's award, according to odds offered on Ladbrokes.com.
A previous winner of the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize, the
Japanese author is known for his surreal plots, use of Western pop culture and
unadorned style. He has an enormous following both in his native country and
abroad. Despite seldom appearing in public, the novelist was an early pioneer of
the internet as a way of connecting with fans.
The author, 64, became a household name in his native country with his 1987
novel Norwegian Wood. A departure from his earlier work, its use of
realism and simple plotting helped him to reach a larger audience and
established Murakami as the voice of the Japanese baby-boomer generation. The
book was adapted for the
screen in 2010 by French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung.
His eagerly awaited latest novel, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years
of Pilgrimage, was published in Japan
in April and sold more than one million copies in its first month of release.
Similar in tone and style to Norwegian Wood, it tells the story of a man
struggling with a traumatic event in his past, who uses a romance to get back on
his feet
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