New Murakami

[jbor at bigpond.com]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/not-lost-in-translation/2006/06/22/ 
1150845292121.html

Excerpt:
[...] About to return to Harvard, Murakami imagines moving back to  
Japan permanently in a few years: "When I'm 60, I guess it will be time  
to settle down." Despite what Japan's most hidebound pundits argue,  
Murakami's writing has always been closer to his homeland than the  
fictional universes of Fitzgerald, Carver and Chandler. Occidental  
critics often compare him with postmodernists such as Don DeLillo and  
Thomas Pynchon. But in Japan, as Murakami tells it, "people do not  
think my stories are postmodern". [...]

best