Books

Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood ノルウェイの森 (Noruwei no Mori)

First published in Japanese in 1987.

Translated into English by Alfred Brinbaum in 1989, then again in 2000 by Jay Rubin.

“Until the publication of Norwegian Wood in 1987, Murakami had enjoyed the psychological and material satisfaction of writing for a solid, faithful readership of perhaps 100,000. But the intrusion on his private life of sudden fame sent the normally unflappable author into a mild depression and the closest thing to writer’s block he had experienced since his debut. For seven months during the latter part of 1988, owing to what he called ‘the after-effects of uproar over Norwegian Wood,’ he was unable to write, though he remained productive as a translator.” —Jay Rubin, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words.

The short-story that led to Norwegian Wood was “Firefly” which you can read in his short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

A film adaptation, directed by Tran Anh Hung, was released in 2010.