Haruki Murakami Publishes His Answers to 3,700 Questions from Fans in a New Japanese eBook

A quick fol­low up: Back in Jan­u­ary, Col­in Mar­shall took you inside Haru­ki Murakami’s unex­pect­ed stint as an agony uncle, writ­ing an online advice col­umn called Mr. Murakami’s Place. Accord­ing to his pub­lish­er, read­ers sent the Japan­ese nov­el­ist 37,465 ques­tions (see a few in trans­la­tion here), and he penned respons­es to 3,716 of them — answer­ing ques­tions like: “30 is right around the cor­ner for me, but there isn’t a sin­gle thing that I feel like I’ve accom­plished.… What should I do with myself?” Or, “My wife quite fre­quent­ly belch­es right near the back of my head when she pass­es behind me… Is there some­thing I can do to stop my wife’s belch­ing?”

Luck­i­ly, at least for Japan­ese read­ers, Muraka­mi has now pub­lished his respons­es (all of them) as an ebook in Japan. And it’s been climb­ing Japan’s Kin­dle best­seller list. Cur­rent­ly, there are no plans to release Mr. Murakami’s Place — The Com­plete Edi­tion – in Eng­lish. The task of trans­lat­ing what amounts to an 8‑volume set of books would be for­mi­da­ble. And yet some­how — like most things Muraka­mi has writ­ten — I sus­pect the col­lec­tion will even­tu­al­ly see the light of day in Eng­lish-speak­ing mar­kets.

Thanks to @justinmegahan and @hyloupa for help­ing us track down this book.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Murakami’s Advice Col­umn (“Mr. Murakami’s Place”) Is Now Online: Read Eng­lish Trans­la­tions

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar