Is the world’s greatest novelist a Lovecraftian – and does his new book prove it?
Haruki Murakami is a literary giant, described by Stephen Poole of the Guardian as “among the world’s greatest living novelists”. The Japanese writer is regularly tipped as the next Nobel laureate for Literature. His books, skating around the borders of surrealism, magic realism, fantasy and science fiction, sell millions and have been published in fifty languages. Murakami’s plots often revolve around threats from inhuman, paranormal beings of undefined power. He quotes Kafka, Doestoyevsky and Flaubert as his influences (1). But if you go deeper, is Murakami’s biggest and most formative influence HP Lovecraft? Continue reading
