Men Without Women: Stories

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In Men Without Women, Murakami's first collection of short stories in several years, the master storyteller continues his exploration of love, loneliness, slightly alternate realities, and (of course) cats. Dryly funny, surreal, and bewitching, these seven tales are classic Murakami. Recommended By Jill O., Powells.com

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are lovesick doctors, students, ex-boyfriends, actors, bartenders, and even Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, brought together to tell stories that speak to us all. In Men Without Women Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic, marked by the same wry humor and pathos that have defined his entire body of work.

"Murakami’s greatest strength is his creation of environments just eccentric enough to wrong-foot you — not exactly magical realism, but perhaps enigmatic realism....When his writing is at its best, his characters act as a fisheye lens through which to scrutinize a slightly off-kilter world that surrounds them." The New Republic

"Affecting....Murakami is a master of the open-ended mystery....His meandering, mesmerizing tales of profound alienation are driven by puzzling circumstances that neither his characters nor readers can crack — recalling existentialist Gabriel Marcel’s assertion that 'Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be experienced.'" The Washington Post

"Time and again in these seven stories, Murakami displays his singular genius." Los Angeles Times

"Classic Murakami....[His] voice — cool, poised, witty, characterized by a peculiar blend of whimsy and poignancy, wit and profundity — hasn’t lost its power to unsettle even as it amuses." The Boston Globe

"[A] beguilingly irresistible book. Like a lost lover, it holds on tight long after the affair is over." The New York Times Book Review

HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, whose previous recipients include J. K. Rowling, Isabel Allende, and Salman Rushdie.