International best-selling author Haruki Murakami breaks book sales record

Tokyo

May 13, 2013 

Haruki Murakami Photo credit: Random House
When Haruki Murakami's latest book became available for pre-order in Japan last month it broke the country's record for pre-orders on Amazon.co.jp within eleven days.

After the first week of the release, Bungeishungu, his publisher in Japan ordered one million copies to be printed. Last month book stores in Japan opened at midnight to greet long lines of customers. Haruki Murakami's latest novel is Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. This is his first new novel since writing best-selling IQ84 three years ago which also received worldwide acclaim. Murakami's books have been translated into 42 languages. Murakami lives near Tokyo and was born in Kyoto in 1949. 

Murakami was a writing fellow at Princeton Univeresity in Princeton, New Jersey, Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

No word yet on when Murakami's latest book will be translated into English, but if you can read Japanese you can check it out here.

Related:

For more articles related to Haruki Murakami's books and life:

Official Random House U.S. site for author Haruki Murakami
Japantimes.co.jp
Amazon.co.jp
Amazon.com author page on Haruki Murakami
Facebook page on author Haruki Murakami managed by Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage Books,
part of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Random House)
Blog post at NewYorker.com by Roland Kelts "Lost in Translation"
Wikipedia

 
Japanese edition of Haruki Murakami's
"Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage"