Their first meeting epitomises their relationship. Bored, frustrated, and aimless - they kill time in J’s bar (run by a Chinese bartender simply called J) in their hometown of Kobe. They met in college, where they were both involved in the 1960’s student protests.īoth characters are now searching for some meaning in their lives.

The narrator and The Rat are 21 and 25 years old respectively when we meet them in Hear The Wind Sing. Three books that aren’t heavily dependent on each other, but feature the same nameless protagonist and his enigmatic friend, The Rat, (a nickname that is never explained). The Rat series is comprised of Hear The Wind Sing (1979), Pinball, 1973 (1980), and A Wild Sheep Chase (1982). This is what he calls ‘the true beginning of my career as a novelist’ and completes The Rat Trilogy. A Wild Sheep Chase (published in 1982) came next. Murakami immediately started working on what he now calls his ‘kitchen-table fiction’, Hear The Wind Sing(published in 1979) and Pinball, 1973(published in 1980), written very late at night in his kitchen after night shifts at his jazz bar, where he worked full-time.ĭespite looking back at these with a touch of ‘embarrassment’, he calls them an ‘irreplaceable’ part of his journey because writing them let him find ‘a creative rhythm distinctively my own’. Get ready to find out about where Murakami got started with writing, including his Kitchen-Table novels, which evolved into The Rat Series (also known as The Rat Trilogy).

‘In that instant, for no reason, and based on no grounds whatsoever, it suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel.’ Yet Murakami might never have written a word without his ‘epiphany’ at a Yakult Swallows baseball game in April 1978.

These are just some of the words used to describe Japanese author Haruki Murakami, whose books have been translated into 50 languages and have infatuated millions of readers worldwide.

A wild sheep chase trilogy