Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music, such as the three books making up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini's opera), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann usually known in English as The Prophet Bird), and The Bird-Catcher (a character in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute). Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse 'Peter Cat' which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers by his Western influences. Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. His work has been described as 'easily accessible, yet profoundly complex'. Murakami Haruki (Japanese: 村上春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. It is an assault on the senses, part murder mystery, part metaphysical speculation a fable for our times as catchy as a rock song blasting from the window of a sports car. 'Dance Dance Dance' - High-class call girls billed to Mastercard a psychic thirteen-year-old drop-out with a passion for Talking Heads a hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers a one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes 'Dance Dance Dance'.

Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold, a runaway friend, a right-wing politico, an ovine-obsessed professor and a manic-depressive in a sheep outfit, implicate them in a hunt for a sheep, that may or may not be running the world, and the upshot is another singular masterpiece from Haruki Murakami. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. 'A Wild Sheep Chase' - His life was like his recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere.

A wild sheep chase