Supremely enjoyable, philosophical and pitch-perfect new collection of short stories. . . Murakami has a marvellous understanding of youth and age – and the failings of each ― Observer

Murakami writes of complex things with his usual beguiling simplicity. . . Strangely invigorating to read. . . It is Murakami at his whimsical, romantic best ― Financial Times

Calculatedly provocative. . ., the stories offer sweet-sour meditations on human solitude and a yearning to connect. . . Murakami, always inventive, is one of the finest popular writers at work today — Ian Thomson ― Evening Standard

Written with all the cats, spaghetti, humor, and gentle surrealism we might expect . . . Men Without Women is a funny, lovely, unmistakably Murakami collection of seven stories about the lives of people trying to find their place in the world and reckoning with their pasts ― Buzzfeed

A disconcertingly funny portrait of modern loneliness — Hayley Maitland ― Vogue

Self-schooled and uncontaminated by writerly edicts, the 68-year-old presents subjects directly on a platter before the reader. . . but stirs up all kinds of themes and truths in the allegorical mud through his gentle, almost conversational style — Hilary A White ― Irish Independent

One of the finest pieces of short-form writing I have enjoyed in many years… If the familiar way of Haruki Murakami are an enthusiasm, there is plenty here to divert the aficionado, but he also takes a turn into riskier territory that could well coax new readers into his distinctive world — Keith Bruce ― Herald

Moments of melancholy and humour mix with acute observation in the latest offering by Japan’s master storyteller — Angel Gurría-Quintana ― Financial Times

A man who starves to death for love, a woman who claims she used to be a lamprey eel, a mysterious whiskey drinker who scares away gangsters – it is the secondary characters who truly come alive in these tales. Peppered with strange women and passive men, unexpected suicides and cats, these vignettes will leave readers questioning, and linger in the mind — India Stoughton

A collection like Men Without Women [restores] my faith…in how utterly perfect [short stories] can be… each of the seven stories here… a gem in and of its own right, but strung together they’re a sparkling strand of precious stones, the light refracted from each equally brilliant but the tones varying subtly. ― Independent

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.

In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami’s distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world’s most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

Philip Gabriel is the author of Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature and Spirit Matters: The Transcendent in Modern Japanese Literature and has translated many novels and short stories by the writer Haruki Murakami and other modern writers. He is recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2001) for his translation of Senji Kuroi’s Life in the Cul-de-Sac, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.

Theodore (Ted) Goossen has translated the work
of many Japanese writers, most notably Naoya
Shiga, Haruki Murakami, and Hiromi Kawakami.
He is the editor of The Oxford Book of Japanese
Short Stories (1997) and the co-editor and founder, with Motoyuki Shibata, of the annual
literary journal Monkey Business (now Monkey:
new writing from Japan), which, since 2011, has
introduced a new generation of Japanese writers to English-speaking readers. Essays and stories by, as well as interview