And, in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, the Kafkaesque spectre in the text is The Trial. Almost without precedent in modern times, he has combined giddy popularity – in Japan, his novels can sell 1m copies in the week of publication – with the literary prestige of admiring reviews from giants such as Updike.Īmong the awards the Japanese author has claimed is the Franz Kafka prize, which is fitting because the Czech fabulist haunts Murakami's fiction as both an explicit presence – in Kafka on the Shore (2002) – and a general tutelary influence. The connection of the Nobel with wealth can be seen as cheeky, because Murakami is perhaps the only contender for the prize to whom the millions of kronor wouldn't make much difference.
And now the 14th work of fiction by Haruki Murakami, a Nobel favourite in recent years among the bookmakers but not the judges, features a young physics student lamenting that few in his profession make much money unless they "win the Nobel prize or something".Īlthough his dig is less pointed than Updike's, Murakami will have known the effect that even such a glancing nod to the Swedish Academy will have had on his readership: in Japan, fans have taken to gathering in cafes with champagne on ice on the day that the news comes from Stockholm. But, in Bech at Bay (1998), John Updike awarded his authorial surrogate, Henry Bech, the Swedish medal and cheque that Updike feared (correctly, it proved) he was doomed never to win himself. V ery few writers reach the stage of being able to include in their books wry references to their failure to win the Nobel prize in literature.
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