Birthday Girl (short story)

"Birthday Girl" (バースデイ・ガール, Bāsudei gāru = Birthday girl) is a short story written by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, and first published in 2002. Murakami was putting together Birthday Stories (2002 in Japanese, 2004 in English), his anthology of short stories on the theme of birthdays, and wrote this story especially^[1] for it. A translation was also published in the July 2003^[2] issue of Harper's Magazine, and collected into Murakami's own compilation Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006 in English, 2009 in Japanese).

Plot summary

A girl who works as a waitress gets her birthday wish granted on her twentieth birthday – a wish that takes the rest of her life to realize.

References

↑ Birthday Stories page, at Exorcising Ghosts. (Note a typo: the Harper's issue is wrongly listed as "June" instead of July.)
↑ Haruki Murakami (tr. Jay Rubin), "Birthday Girl" (pay article), in Harper's Magazine, July 2003 issue.

Works by Haruki Murakami

Titles listed in order originally published (dates of Japanese publication, English translation)

Novels	Hear the Wind Sing (1979, tr. 1987) Pinball, 1973 (1980, tr. 1985) A Wild Sheep Chase (1982, tr. 1989) Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985, tr. 1991) Norwegian Wood (1987, tr. 2000) Dance Dance Dance (1988, tr. 1994) South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992, tr. 2000) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–1995, tr. 1997) Sputnik Sweetheart (1999, tr. 2001) Kafka on the Shore (2002, tr. 2005) After Dark (2004, tr. 2007) 1Q84 (2009–2010, tr. 2011) Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2013, tr. 2014)

Story collections	The Elephant Vanishes (1980–1991, tr. 1993) after the quake (1999–2000, tr. 2002) Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (1980–2005, tr. 2006)

Non-fiction	Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (1997–1998, tr. 2000) What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007, tr. 2008)

Other books	Birthday Stories (2002 anthology, tr. 2004) The Strange Library (2005 illustrated children's novella, tr. 2014)

Adaptations	The Elephant Vanishes (2003 play) Tony Takitani (2004 film) Norwegian Wood (2010 film)