Editors Reads Verdict
The most comprehensive Murakami story collection — twenty-four pieces spanning his entire career, demonstrating how consistently original and strange his vision has remained.
What We Loved
- The widest range of any single Murakami collection
- Several stories unavailable elsewhere in English
- The title story is among his most beautiful
Minor Drawbacks
- Uneven across 24 stories — some minor pieces included
- Works better dipped into than read straight through
Key Takeaways
- → The breadth of Murakami's short fiction across three decades
- → Story as a form that suits his elliptical vision
- → Japanese daily life as the ground from which the uncanny grows
| Author | Haruki Murakami |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Knopf |
| Pages | 333 |
| Published | January 1, 2006 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Murakami completists; readers of literary short fiction |
Twenty-four stories, drawn from across Murakami’s career — many making their first appearance in English translation, others gathered from literary magazines and previous Japanese collections. The range is wider here than in any other single volume: Tokyo office workers discovering strange things in their apartments, a couple who cannot agree about a birthday present, a woman who is nearly run over by a bus and begins to hear voices, a man who turns into a crab to bring a message from his dead wife.
The title story — a boy visits his cousin in hospital, where a nurse with a hearing problem keeps mishearing ‘blind willow, sleeping woman’ — has the quality of a dream that is over before you understand what it meant, and that stays with you for years. This is the register Murakami’s short fiction inhabits most naturally: not resolution or explanation, but impression and aftermath.
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is the most comprehensive single-volume survey of Murakami’s short fiction, and the best evidence that his stories operate on different principles than his novels — more compressed, more willing to refuse meaning, more purely atmospheric.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" about?
Twenty-four short stories spanning twenty-five years of Murakami's career, many translated into English for the first time in this collection. A frog saves Tokyo, a man's dead wife appears as a crab, a couple separates over a mysterious birthday present. The full range of his imagination in a single volume.
Who should read "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman"?
Murakami completists; readers of literary short fiction
What are the key takeaways from "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman"?
The breadth of Murakami's short fiction across three decades Story as a form that suits his elliptical vision Japanese daily life as the ground from which the uncanny grows
Is "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" worth reading?
The most comprehensive Murakami story collection — twenty-four pieces spanning his entire career, demonstrating how consistently original and strange his vision has remained.
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