Product Description
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Author: Haruki Murakami
Format: Paperback
'Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional'
The must-read gift for every runner: a compelling meditation on the power of running and a fascinating insight into the life of this internationally bestselling writer.
In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he'd completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and on his writing.
Equal parts travelogue, training log and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and settings ranging from Tokyo's Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston.
By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, this is a must-read for fans of this masterful yet private writer as well as for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running.
*Murakami's new book The City and Its Uncertain Walls is available now*
'There can never have been a book quite like this memoir of running and writing before. In its self-contained way, it's nothing less than an inspiration' — Evening Standard
'Hugely enjoyable...You don't have to have run a marathon to be captivated' — Sunday Telegraph
'Comical, charming and philosophical...an excellent memoir' — GQ
About the Author
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.
In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, First Person Singular and The City and Its Uncertain Walls Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.
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