Once you've read all of Murakami's books, are there any other writers who scratch that itch for you?

of course. I really want to read Arundhati roy's "The god of small things" and finish Rushdie's "Midnight's children". Read some more sedaris, vonnegut, studs terkel (I heard murakami fashoined the book about the gas attacks after studs' style). Ben Okri is a pretty great "magical realism" writer too.

I'm not a Vonnegut fan for some reason, but Studs Terkel is my hero. I'll check out Ben Okri.

I thought Aundrey Kurkov's Death and the Penguin scratched a little itch for me. Also Franz Kafka and F.Scott Fitzgerald, as I think Murakami is a little influenced by them.

Check out "The Long Good-Bye" by Raymond Chandler. One of the greatest American novels of the 20th Century. And Murakami has recently translated it into the Japanese, along with "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "The Great Gatsby."

I agree about "Death and the Penguin," too!

david mitchell is a huge murakami fan, and it shows in his writing. the absurd coexists with the mundane in his novels. i recommend cloud atlas to everyone, and black swan green has elements of kafka on the shore to it (less oedipal, more modern bildungsroman). number 9 dream is also quite good, and i'm currently reading his first one, ghostwritten, which is blowing my mind.

Thomas Pynchon, hands down.

I agree with Sarah, Mitchell is huge. I was tempted to mention him earlier, but a little vague on the scope of this thread.

While there are moments in Mitchell that remind me of Murakami (esp. one chapter of Ghostwritten - certainly the Japanese kid working in the record store is an homage), overall I have to say he "scratches a different itch" for me.

There is a danger here of people just naming other novelist we really dig, who may or may not actually relate to M. No big deal, but do you see what I mean? Just look at other things people in the group have given high stars to. We share the love for M, but off of that common root, the forest grows strong in a zillion directions.

Osamu Dazai was my first experience with japanese writers, his gothy creepiness, cold roboticness of his protaginist was really mind blowing for me!

I didn't like the Mitchell I've read. But thanks for the other tips, people. This is great. I'm reserving Death and the Penguin at my library as we speak.

Yeah, great tips! I've already added a bunch of stuff to my list. I wish I could contribute some ideas myself, but I've been running a little dry lately -- hence the original post.

Yeah, studs is definitely one of my heroes as well. His memoir "Touch and Go" was released sometime the end of last year i think. It was good. Interesting for him to talk about himself for once (and hear him tell a story about buckminster fuller).
There is something about Vonnegut i like, but sometimes he gets a little too "scifi-y" for me. I'm actually kind of surprised that you like terkel and not him. He has some really great ideas and phrasings, and seems to have shared a lot of the same political leanings as studs'. his last, Armageddon in Retrospect,has some really good short stories. I would recommend browsing it some time, maybe it might strike you.

Ben Orki can be kind of dense at times but the stories are really something else. "The famished Road" takes a bit to get into it but is one of my all time favorites...it feels more like having a dream than reading a book.

Kudos to the person who suggested "The Long Goodbye" -- and any Raymond Chandler. Great, great, GREAT books, and I never would have thought of them in connection to Murakami.

Time to revisit.

What I love about Murakami is how he can be so mind-bending and head-exploding with such an accessible, clear style and voice. I've tried other authors trying to get that experience, but have a hard time finding writers who can do mind-bending without getting opaque, dense and smug (cough, david-foster-wallace, cough-cough).

OK, I have one -- Nabokov. Don't know why I didn't think of him right off the bat. I love all his books but "Speak, Memory" is way up there.

Some of the Bergman films, esp. "Persona" remind me of Murakami. Not sure I can articulate why. I think it's because he, like Murakami, makes the viewer/reader process the images in a nonconvential manner...the perceiver has to work pretty hard, in a stimulating way, to create meaning from the piece. I'm not articulating that very well, but I think you probably know what I mean. Illima's said it way better than I can in message 14.

Jeff Noon and Octavia Butler both rock my boat.

I will second Ilima's vote on Nabokov. Really brilliant stuff. A shocking difference I think from reading Murakami though.

J.L. Borges and older Philip K. Dick write similar strange realities like Murakami puts in his work. In fact, I think Borges can bend reality in a short story more effectively and memorably than most can do in a novel.

Thanks for bringing up PK Dick. Do you have a recommendation for a good place to start with him?

Really, any PK Dick from the sixties is great. I'd go with The Man in The High Castle, or Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Both are fantastic, and I think his least traditionally "sci-fi" novels. I'd look into the I Ching before reading Castle though, apparently he used it extensively in writing the book. Some even say he let the I Ching write the book for him.

I just found out about Etgar Keret. I'm reading his "The Girl on the Fridge". Greatness.

As far as PKD recommendations go, I'd vote for Ubik or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and any of his short fiction (there are a ton of movies based off of short stories of his, such as Total Recall and Minority Report). These would be the ones I'd recommend if you liked Hard-Boiled Wonderland. I'll second Man in the High Castle if you're more inclined to Wild Sheep Chase.

Yay! I was wondering if there was anything Murakamiesque out there... :)

Hey, has anyone read "Atmospheric Disturbances" by Rivka Galchen? Check it out...a few of the reviewers have mentioned a Murakami/Borges similarity. I read the first thirty pages tonight and the book is good and the comparisons warranted...in fact, the book, at this points, has the main character looking for a missing character, just like in some of Murakami's work. Check it out.

http://www.amazon.com/Atmospheric-Distur...

Has anyone read The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro? I have a feeling that Murakami fans would really be able to get into this one. Ishiguro takes the Kafkaesque dreamscape to nth degree. I had a really visceral reaction to this novel, to the point of thinking I wouldn't be able to stand it any longer, and then I just let go of all resistance and got swept away by it. Not surprisingly other writers have said they think it's a masterpiece - but aren't quite sure.

I'd second that Philip K Dick comment, there are some great early Dick books that really feed off the future-Murakami vibe (oh yes time isn't linear) and we're all influenced in the past by the writings of the future, against our knowledge.

:)

Anyway, that sorta nonsense aside, here's a link to the Goodreads 'Philip K Dick' discussion group, which I'm the moderator of. All on this forum are welcome. It's a lively place and growing daily.

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1210...

I read Glass Soup by Jonathan Carroll recently, and the tone of magical realism reminded me of Murakami in a lot of ways. I heard that Glass Soup isn't his best though, so I'm going to look into more.

Of Carroll's older works, I would recommend Sleeping in Flame and From the Teeth of Angels -

Thanks for the heads up on Carroll. I've just picked up Rivka Galchen's "Atmospheric Disturbances," and it's proving to be very Murakami-esque. Also, NPR has had an interview with the author and some very positive feedback, here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...

I'm surprised noone's mentioned Paul Auster yet. Check out his "New York Trilogy." It blends mystery and investigation with a somewhat magical realist twist.

For a Murakami-similar short story fix, Raymond Carver's stories are very good, in a somewhat bleak way. This is actually a direct connection to Murakami, as he is one of the Japanese translators of Carver's work. (The title of Murakami's latest book, _What I Talk About When I Talk About Running_, clearly comes from the title of Carver's short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", both in English and in Japanese.)

For a happier sort of novel with similarities to Murakami in terms of magical realist plot devices, there's always some John Irving. (And it turns out that Murakami has translated Irving into Japanese as well. Surprise!)

I'd say the same about Jonathan Safran Foer's novels, with their magical realist devices and emphasis on the connection of the present to the World War-era past. But I will include the caveat that the people I've recommended Foer to have either loved or hated his books.