![]() ![]() That’s how Murakami’s stories often roll, luring us into strange moments, making us ask the questions we once chewed on about life, about what it means to bear the burden of selfhood, about how time seems to bend around us like the wind around the trees-invisible but clearly active. Murakami is not popular throughout the world because he consciously integrates Western ideas and language into his fiction, but because his work-fueled by a tension with his forebears-fuses cultures, or perhaps leaps over them, defying time, beating like pop songs, touching universal nerves. One can feel him easing up in the eight stories collected in First Person Singular, allowing his own voice-or what sounds like his own voice, wonderfully translated by Philip Gabriel-to enter the narratives, creating a confessional tone that reminded me of Alice Munro’s late work. ![]()
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