First Person Singular

Get in the xigxag app
This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.
Pre-order Buy Now £{{ price }}
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A GUARDIAN AND SUNDAY TIMES 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK

A mindbending new collection of short stories from the unique, internationally acclaimed author of Norwegian Wood and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios, an encounter with a talking monkey and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides.

Philosophical and mysterious, the stories in First Person Singular all touch beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory. . . all with a signature Murakami twist.

© Haruki Murakami 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Critics Review

  • First Person Singular is a patch of intense variety and colour… Murakami’s protagonists tend to be introspective, ordinary men who find themselves confronted by women and unusual situations. It is as much their reactions to events as the events themselves that make his books so brilliant

    Evening Standard

  • Mind-bending…touches beautifully on love, solitude, childhood memories, dreamlike scenarios, invented jazz albums and meditations on music. In true Murakami tale-telling perfection, it’s devourable

    Irish Daily Mail

  • I never tire of re-entering Murakami’s world, finding his Proustian ability to covey the texture of memory exhilarating, and his fatalistic heroes and their deadpan response to the melodramatic and the outré soothing

    Daily Telegraph

  • These stories are unmistakably Murakami’s for the way they traffic in his signature themes of time and memory, nostalgia and young love… each one [story] has insights that remain with you long after they are done

    Sunday Times

  • The hallmarks of Haruki Murakami’s longer fiction are all here; an enigmatic eeriness which hints at the supernatural in everyday situations, a love of jazz and baseball, and the nourishing nostalgia of pop music

    Daily Mail

More from the same

Author

Narrator

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.