Haruki Murakami fans discussion
Short Stories
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Repository for eBook format of his freely available short stories
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It's my pleasure. If you come across any inaccuracies or a story on the Internet that I haven't converted, feel free to let me know.
Awesome! Murakami's shorts really do pack a punch.. I read The Elephant Vanishes collection back in high school and some of those stories are still pretty vivid. "The Second Bakery Attack" and "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" remain favorites, and I just learned "Barn Burning" was adapted into an award-winning 2018 Korean film. Makes it almost scary to think that Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is even better. Anyway, I'm really glad to be able to revisit so many of them, so thank you very much!
I feel that a short story is often more difficult to do well then an extended work-- that's not even considering something like 1Q84. With so many books on my 'to be read' list, I sometimes find it difficult to justify re-reading something. When it's a short story, it's easier for me to pick up.I'm thrilled you are enjoying them.
I'm the same! Strange, actually, now that I think about it, but the only book I've ever re-read is Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata. It's quite short, but a real silent assassin of a novel; a subtle meditation on loss and desire, and the beauty inherent in their conflict (my cheapest attempt at a one-line hook).As far as Murakami's longer works go, the conversation for me starts and stops with Wind-Up Bird. Beyond that, I've probably got the biggest soft spot for Hard-Boiled Wonderland, as well as his companion(?) novels Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance, which to me are his most underrated works. Kafka on the Shore, for being so cool in many ways, wasn't on the whole all that convincing. For one, I never really took to the younger narrator, who constitutes a major departure from Murakami's trademark protagonist: an unremarkable, middle-aged man, often with a dead-end job, who finds himself vaguely in a rut/at a crossroads when something extraordinary occurs.
Ironically, while the majority of my Murakami reading was done in my teenage years, it's his older heroes that have always resonated the most. To that end, IQ84 was brilliant. All three main characters are adults (Ushikawa, IIRC, is somewhat elderly), and they each harbor significant baggage/childhood trauma. Tengo and Aomame in particular showcase HM's ability to draw up complex characters that seem pretty clear-eyed about Who They Are Now, but must violently confront their pasts in order to understand how they got there, and this against the backdrop of an increasingly batshit reality. Kafka just comes off very hollow by comparison -- an empty vehicle for a very compelling plot. That being said, Murakami himself believes it's his novel most suitable to re-reads, so maybe I'll give it another shot eventually.
I'm glad so many are enjoying this. Please let me know if you find anything freely available that I have not included. (I don't care about the format. I can do some pretty complex conversions and, as a last result, I'll even enter it manually.)
Also, if there are any errors, please let me know so I can fix them.
I just did the conversion and uploaded it. (I also re-created a proper .zip file of the entire directory in case you want to share the directory or haven't downloaded any yet.)Thanks! Enjoy.
PS- I'm going to search for those others that are 'locked' on Granta. Often, his stories will be released in multiple places.
I have added his latest story 'Cream' which was published on Monday, January 21, 2019 in The New Yorker.
Thank you for the work that you have done. I was just reminded again how much I love Tony Takitani and how smoothly the name rolls off the tongue.
Hey Tenzin, thanks a lot men. Your collection is awesome.
https://cloud.disroot.org/s/gbB4Q68Tj...