Birthday Stories is a 2002 short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 anthology

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

 in 192 pages by Japanese author Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami

is a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and Jerusalem Prize among others.He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature...

. Despite the theme's happy connotations most of the short stories have a dark, melancholic atmosphere.

Contents

The anthology starts with an introduction by Haruki Murakami. He speaks about his birthday and of birthday

Birthday

A birthday is a day or anniversary where a person celebrates his or her date of birth. Birthdays are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with a gift, party or rite of passage. Although the major religions celebrate the birth of their founders , Christmas – which is celebrated widely by...

s in general. For example he mentions his visit Jack London

Jack London

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

's farm, which he did because he liked London's writings and because they share the same birthday.

It is compiled of:

Forever Overhead (by David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...

),
Turning (Lynda Sexson),
The Birthday Cake (Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons is an American writer. He was a senior editor at Forbes magazine and is now a writer at Newsweek.-Career:He has written a book of short stories, The Last Good Man , a novel, Dog Days , and a fictional biography, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody...

),
Timothy's Birthday (William Trevor

William Trevor

William Trevor, KBE is an Irish author and playwright. He is considered one of the elder statesman of the Irish literary world and widely regarded as the greatest contemporary writer of short stories in the English language....

),
Dundun (Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson

Denis Hale Johnson is an American author who is known for his short-story collection Jesus' Son and his novel Tree of Smoke , which won the National Book Award. He also writes plays, poetry and non-fiction.- Biography :...

),
The Moor (Russell Banks

Russell Banks

Russell Banks is an American writer of fiction and poetry.- Biography :Russell Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts on March 28, 1940. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in upstate New York, and has been named a New York State Author. He is also...

),
Angel of Mercy, Angel of Death (Ethan Canin

Ethan Canin

Ethan Andrew Canin is an American author, educator, and physician. He is a member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa....

),
The Birthday Present

The Birthday Present

The Birthday Present is a 1957 British drama film directed by Pat Jackson. It stars Tony Britton, a top toy salesmen returning from a business trip to Germany with a watch hidden inside a toy, intended as a birthday present for his wife Sylvia Syms. He is caught by customs, arrested, and sentenced...

(Andrea Lee

Andrea Lee

Andrea Lee is an American author of novels and memoirs. Her stories are often international in setting and deal with questions of racial and national identity, as well as collisions between cultures. Lee grew up in Philadelphia...

),
The Bath (Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....

),
A Game Of Dice (Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux

Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar . He has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his...

),
Close to the Water's Edge (Claire Keegan

Claire Keegan

Claire Keegan is an Irish short story writer. She was born in County Wicklow in 1968, the youngest of a large Roman Catholic family. She travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana when she was seventeen and studied English and Political Science at Loyola University...

),
The Ride (Lewis Robinson

Lewis Robinson

Lewis Robinson is an American author. His first book, Officer Friendly and Other Stories, was published by HarperCollins in 2003. A graduate of Middlebury College and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, Robinson currently lives in Andover, Massachusetts as the writer-in-residence of Phillips Academy.-Life...

) and
Birthday Girl

Birthday Girl (short story)

-Background:Birthday Girl is a short story written by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in 2004. Murakami was putting together an anthology of short stories on the theme of birthdays. He chose to write a story solely for the anthology...

by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami

is a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and Jerusalem Prize among others.He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature...

.