Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (めくらやなぎと眠る女 Mekurayanagi to nemuru onna) is a collection of short stories

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...

 by Japanese

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 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...

.

The stories contained in the book were written between 1981 and 2005 and this collection was first published in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 in 2006. Around half the stories were translated

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

 by Philip Gabriel

Philip Gabriel

J. Philip Gabriel is a full professor and department chair of the University of Arizona's Department of East Asian Studies and is one of the major translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami....

 with the other half being translated by Jay Rubin

Jay Rubin

Jay Rubin is an American academic and translator. He is most notable for being one of the main translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. He has also written a guide to Japanese, Making Sense of Japanese , and a biographical literary analysis of Murakami.He has...

. In this collection, the stories alternate between the two translators for the most part.

Murakami considers this to be his first real collection of short stories since The Elephant Vanishes

The Elephant Vanishes

The Elephant Vanishes is a collection of short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The stories were written between 1983 and 1990, and the collection's first English publication was in 1993...

(1993

1993 in literature

The year 1993 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Professor Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, becomes the longest running book on the bestseller list of The Sunday Times....

) and considers after the quake

After the quake

is a collection of short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. First published in 2000, it was released in English as after the quake in 2002 .-Background:...

(2000

2000 in literature

The year 2000 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* February 13 - Final original Peanuts comic strip is published...

) to be more akin to a concept album

Concept album

In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...

, as its stories were designed to produce a cumulative effect.

In the introductory notes to the English language edition of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami declares, ‘I find writing novels a challenge, writing stories a joy. If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.’ This elegant analogy serves to give the reader some idea of what awaits.

Contents

Many of the stories in the collection have been published previously in literary magazines, although some have been revised for Blind Willow. The stories are listed below in the order in which they appear in the book.

Title	Previously published in	Year Written
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman	Harper's	1995
Birthday Girl	Harper's and Birthday Stories Birthday Stories Birthday Stories is a 2002 short story anthology in 192 pages by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Despite the theme's happy connotations most of the short stories have a dark, melancholic atmosphere.- Contents :...	2002
New York Mining Disaster		1980 / 1981
Aeroplane:Or, How He Talked to Himself as If Reciting Poetry	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
The Mirror		1981 / 1982
A Folklore for My Generation: A Prehistory of Late-Stage Capitalism	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...	1989
Hunting Knife	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...	1984
A Perfect Day for Kangaroos		1981 / 1982
Dabchick	McSweeney's Quarterly Concern Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is a literary journal, first published in 1998, edited by Dave Eggers. The first issue featured only works rejected by other magazines, but thereafter the journal began to include pieces written with McSweeney's in mind. McSweeney’s has since published works by...	1981 / 1982
Man-Eating Cats	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...	1991
A 'Poor Aunt' Story	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...	1980 / 1981
Nausea 1979		1984
The Seventh Man	Granta Granta Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centers on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real." In 2007, The Observer stated, "In its blend of...	1996
The Year of Spaghetti	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...	1981 / 1982
Tony Takitani	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...	1990
The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes		1981 / 1982
The Ice Man	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...	1991
Crabs	Storie #50	2003
Firefly	Extract from Norwegian Wood Norwegian Wood (novel) is a 1987 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.The novel is a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality. The story's protagonist and narrator is Toru Watanabe, who looks back on his days as a college student living in Tokyo...	1983
Chance Traveller	Harper's	2005
Hanalei Bay		2005
Where I'm Likely to Find It	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...	2005
The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day		2005
A Shinagawa Monkey	The New Yorker The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...	2005

Tony Takitani

Tony Takitani

Tony Takitani is a 2004 Japanese film directed by Jun Ichikawa, based on the short story by Haruki Murakami.-Inspiration:Haruki Murakami was intrigued by the name Tony Takitani when, at a garage sale on Maui, he found a yellow T-shirt that said, "Tony Takitani, House ."At the time, Takitani was...

 (トニー滝谷) was adapted into a 2004 Japanese movie directed by Jun Ichikawa.

The final five stories all appeared in the book Tōkyō Kitanshū (Strange Tales From Tokyo), published in Japan in 2005.

Awards

• Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award -September, 2006
  2006 in literature
  The year 2006 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Literature:*Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun*Chris Adrian - The Children's Hospital *Martin Amis - House of Meetings...
  
  
• Kiriyama Prize -February, 2007
  2007 in literature
  The year 2007 in literature involves some significant new books.-Events:*November 19 - First Kindle e-book reader released.*December 11 - Terry Pratchett informs fans on-line that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's disease.-Literature:...
  
  - "Following the announcement of the Prize, Mr Murakami declined to accept the award for reasons of personal principle."

External links

• Review at The Guardian
• Review at The Australian
• Reviews at Metacritic.com