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First Person Singular

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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
The short stories are an excellent entry point for Murakami neophytes. If he has passed you by and you're trying to work out where to begin they'll give you an immediate taste for whether his tone and effect works for you or leaves you cold: without the pressure of hundreds of pages and epic scope, he's stripped back to the deeply human, deeply funny weirdness that defines his best work.
Sydney Morning Herald
At his strongest he's like Kafka in Tokyo
Herald
Thought-provoking: the essence of life, Murakami suggests, is grappling with the inexplicable
Mail on Sunday
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
Sheerluxe
A wonderfully surreal collection of short stories... Murakami has an ability to make the mundane fantastical and the fantastical mundane... First Person Singular is an engaging and enigmatic collection to savour and enjoy
Essential Marbella
Author Haruki Murakami
Narrator Kotaro Watanabe
Duration 5 hours and 24 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781473590335
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Alternative history fiction, Fiction in translation, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Short stories
Availability AU, GB, IE

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