| Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman | |
|---|---|
UK 1st edition cover |
|
| Author(s) | Haruki Murakami |
| Translator | Philip Gabriel, Jay Rubin |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| Genre(s) | Short story collection |
| Publisher | Harvill Secker (UK) Knopf (US) |
| Published in English |
July 6, 2006 (UK) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 334 pp (UK) 352 pp (US) |
| ISBN | ISBN 1-84343-269-2 (UK 1st edition) ISBN 1-4000-4461-8 (US 1st edition) |
| OCLC Number | 65203792 |
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (めくらやなぎと眠る女 Mekurayanagi to nemuru onna) is a collection of short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
The stories contained in the book were written between 1981 and 2005 and this collection was first published in English in 2006. Around half the stories were translated by Philip Gabriel with the other half being translated by Jay Rubin. In this collection, the stories alternate between the two translators for the most part.
Murakami considers this to be his first real collection of short stories since The Elephant Vanishes (1993) and considers after the quake (2000) to be more akin to a concept album, as its stories were designed to produce a cumulative effect.[1]
In the introductory notes to the English language edition of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami declares, ‘I find writing novels a challenge, writing stories a joy. If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.’ This elegant analogy serves to give the reader some idea of what awaits.[2]
Contents |
Many of the stories in the collection have been published previously in literary magazines, although some have been revised for Blind Willow. The stories are listed below in the order in which they appear in the book.
| Title | Previously published in[3] | Year Written[1] |
|---|---|---|
| Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman | Harper's | 1995 |
| Birthday Girl | Harper's and Birthday Stories | 2002 |
| New York Mining Disaster | 1980 / 1981 | |
| Aeroplane:Or, How He Talked to Himself as If Reciting Poetry | The New Yorker | |
| The Mirror | 1981 / 1982 | |
| A Folklore for My Generation: A Prehistory of Late-Stage Capitalism | The New Yorker | 1989 |
| Hunting Knife | The New Yorker | 1984 |
| A Perfect Day for Kangaroos | 1981 / 1982 | |
| Dabchick | McSweeney's Quarterly Concern | 1981 / 1982 |
| Man-Eating Cats | The New Yorker | 1991 |
| A 'Poor Aunt' Story | The New Yorker | 1980 / 1981 |
| Nausea 1979 | 1984 | |
| The Seventh Man | Granta | 1996 |
| The Year of Spaghetti | The New Yorker | 1981 / 1982 |
| Tony Takitani | The New Yorker | 1990 |
| The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes | 1981 / 1982 | |
| The Ice Man | The New Yorker | 1991 |
| Crabs | Storie #50 | 2003[4] |
| Firefly | Extract from Norwegian Wood | 1983 |
| Chance Traveller | Harper's | 2005 |
| Hanalei Bay | 2005 | |
| Where I'm Likely to Find It | The New Yorker | 2005 |
| The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day | 2005 | |
| A Shinagawa Monkey | The New Yorker | 2005 |
Tony Takitani (トニー滝谷) was adapted into a 2004 Japanese movie directed by Jun Ichikawa.
The final five stories all appeared in the book Tōkyō Kitanshū (Strange Tales From Tokyo), published in Japan in 2005.
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