Cats and Classical Music - Haruki Murakami Quiz

Answer: Japan

Some of Murakami's influences include the American authors Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver, whose complete works he has translated into Japanese. He is fluent in English, having learnt the language through the crime novels he read in his youth, but prefers to write in Japanese.

His works have been translated into over 50 languages, and he takes an active role in getting them translated. Many of the English language translations were written by the esteemed Japanese translator Jay Rubin.

Answer: Baseball

Haruki Murakami became a novelist fairly late in life, deciding to write his first novel when he was 29. The story goes that as he was watching his beloved Yakult Swallows play the Hiroshima Carp in Tokyo's Jingu Stadium, and as Dave Hilton came in to bat, he decided that he should write a novel.

He then wrote for an hour every evening, completing his first novel after four months. The result was 'Hear the Wind Sing', a broad-scoping novel about love and loss, centred around the Japanese student movement and narrated by an unnamed young man. The other major character is his close friend 'The Rat', who also appears in the subsequent works 'Pinball, 1973' and 'A Wild Sheep Chase'. They are often collectively referred to as 'The Rat Trilogy'.

Answer: Norwegian Wood

Having enjoyed moderate success with 'A Wild Sheep Chase' and 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World', Murakami's popularity really kicked-off with the publication of 'Norwegian Wood'. The story follows Toru Watanabe, a 37-year-old man who reminisces of his college days after hearing his favourite Beatles song, 'Norwegian Wood'. The novel is very much a bildungsroman, telling of Watanabe's flourishing sexuality via his relationships with the quiet, troubled Naoko and the gregarious Midori.

It was unsurprisingly very popular with the youth of Japan, and has since sold in excess of 10 million copies worldwide. The book was adapted into a 2010 film starring Kenichi Matsuyama as Watanabe and directed by Tran Anh Hung.

Answer: Johnnie Walker

Johnnie Walker (the character, not the 19th century whisky entrepreneur) is mean, very mean. If you are squeamish or have a particularly affinity for fictional cats I suggest you don't read on!

'Kafka on the Shore' tells the story of two main characters, a 15-year-old runaway (Kafka) who is trying to escape an Oedipal curse and an older man (Nakata) who has in the ability to communicate with cats. Their narratives are presented in alternate chapters, a common structural setup in a Murakami novel. Nakata is known for his ability to locate lost cats, a skill that leads him to a run-in with Johnnie Walker, a man (or possibly just a concept!) who kills cats and takes their souls in order to construct a magic flute. Despite this gruesome image, 'Kafka on the Shore' is an enthralling, mind-bending novel that is definitely worth a read. If you need any further encouragement, Colonel Sanders appears as a hustler who guides Nakata for a brief period of the book.

Answer: Running

Besides writing, running is one of the most important aspects of Murakami's life, as he describes in intimate detail in 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running'. Despite not taking up the sport until he was in his mid-thirties, he has been an avid runner ever since, and has competed in over twenty marathons.

He has also completed an ultramarathon (a race that is even longer than a normal marathon), running 100 km in a race in Hokkaido. His mantra is that no matter how tired you are, you should never walk.

Answer: 1Q84

The title '1Q84' is actually a play on words in Japanese, where number 9 is typically Romanised as 'kyu'. Similarly to 'Kafka on the Shore', '1Q84' alternately tells the story of two characters. The first is a young woman, Aomame, a fitness instructor who moonlights as a hitwoman for the mysterious Dowager. The second is a young man, Tengo, an aspiring author who spends most of his time teaching mathematics.

The link between the two is the cult of Sakigake, a cult religious sect. Aomame is commissioned to kill 'The Leader' of Sakigake, while Tengo meets the daughter of its founder, Fuka-Eri, after she submits a manuscript to a literary award run by his publisher. Their stories run into one as the novel reaches its conclusion but to say any more really would be to ruin it!

Answer: Franz Kafka

Perhaps the most frequently used adjective in literary criticism, Kafkaesque is often used to describe some of Murakami's work. Usually meaning that a work features themes of isolation or terror with a surreal element, the term derives from the work of Franz Kafka, some of the best examples being 'The Trial', 'The Castle' and 'The Metamorphosis'.

The Franz Kafka prize is awarded annually to an author whose works have an "existential, timeless character" and "generally human validity". The prize gained in prominence after two authors (Austrian Elfriede Jelinek and Briton Harold Pinter) went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in the same year. Unfortunately, Murakami broke this trend after having won the award the year after Harold Pinter.

Of the options given, Heinrich Boll was the only other German language author. He is best known for his 1959 novel 'Billiards at Half-Past Nine'. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a Colombian novelist, best known for 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', and Gustave Flaubert was a Frenchman known for 'Madame Bovary'.

Answer: The Great Gatsby

In addition to his own impressive oeuvre, Murakami is a prolific translator of English-language novels into Japanese. He has produced translations of modern classics including 'The Catcher in the Rye' and 'The Great Gatsby', as well as works from a variety of other authors including Raymond Chandler, Ursula K. Le Guin and Tim O'Brien.

He has also translated the entire output of the American short story writer Raymond Carver.

Answer: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The first of the three sections in question are 'The Thieving Magpie', an opera semiseria, or 'semi-serious opera' composed by Giaochino Rossini that premiered in 1817. The overture was famously used to great effect in Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange'. The second is Robert Schumann's 'The Prophet Bird' and the third is named 'The Birdcatcher', after the endearing Papageno from 'The Magic Flute'.

'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 1995, awarded by Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe, a former harsh critic of Murakami's work.

Answer: Asking Murakami questions to which he could respond

The website was billed by the media as something along the lines of an 'agony uncle' service that Murakami was providing as an aside to writing novels. This wasn't the exact purpose of the site and the breadth of topics covered by Murakami and his readers was enormous, ranging from discussions of his work to raising children and discussing hate speech. Unfortunately the site was only published in Japanese, though many of his responses have been translated for English-language readers.

The homepage features an entertaining image that sees a cartoon Murakami having a picnic with a cat and a ram in the middle of the woods.

As surreal as one would expect!