Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Limited first edition in English. 8vo., pp. x, 334, [8, blank]. Publisher's quarter-bound black cloth over illustrated, cream paper-covered boards, lettered in silver to spine; brown endpapers. #695 / 1000 numbered copies, with the publisher's bookplate signed in English by the author, tipped-in to the half-title page. As issued, without dustjacket, in a matching black cloth slipcase stamped to front with willow motif in silver. Preceding the Japanese issue, Mekurayanagi to nemuru onna (2009), by three years, and the American edition by a month.

Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin. An eclectic collection of twenty-four short stories, written between 1980 and 2005, and selected by the author himself with some specifically revised for this compilation.

Of them, "The Seventh Man" originally appeared in Granta; "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman", "Birthday Girl" and "Chance Traveller" in Harper's; "Dabchick" in McSweeny's; "Aeroplane: Or, How He Talked to Himself as if Reciting Poetry" (originally published as "Airplane"), "The Folklore for My Generation: A Pre-history of Late-Stage Capitalism" (originally published as "The Folklore of Our Times" and translated by Alfred Birnbaum), "Hunting Knife", "The Ice Man" (in a translation by Richard Peterson), "The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day", "Man-eating Cats", "New York Mining Disaster", "A 'Poor Aunt' Story", "Tony Takitani", "A Shinagawa Monkey", "Where I'm Likely to Find It", and "The Year of Spaghetti" in The New Yorker; "Crabs" in Storie Magazine; and "The Mirror" in The Yale Review. "Firefly" originally appeared in the author's novel Norwegian Wood (2000).

In his four-page introduction, Murakami states, "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."

Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award – the world's richest short story prize – with the jury calling it a "truly wonderful collection" from a "master of prose fiction."

"Tony Takitani" was made into a 2004 Japanese film directed by Jun Ichikawa, starring Issey Ogata and Rie Miyazawa, with the soundtrack composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

"An intimate pleasure." –Ruth Scurr, The Times