Now for the first time, many of Murakami's best-loved short stories are available in graphic novel form in English. Haruki Murakami Manga Stories is one of three short story compilations, which present a total of 9 short stories from Murakami's bestselling collections.
With their trademark mix of realism and fantasy, centering around Murakami's characteristic themes of loss, remorse and confusion, the four stories in this volume are:
Super-Frog Saves Tokyo: A few days after an earthquake, Katagiri discovers a giant frog in this home. The frog promises to save Tokyo from another earthquake, but Katagiri must help him. Is this real, or is Katagiri dreaming? "[This story has] such an engaging mix of realism and fantasy that it takes a while for you to realize what a sad undertow the story has and how much it says about Katagiri's solitary life, his feelings of powerlessness and his dread of another quake." —The New York Times
Where I'm Likely to Find It: A woman's husband goes missing so she hires detective. As the detective traces the man's whereabouts, he reflects on the meaning of his own life. "A searching Kafkaesque parable about disappearance, loss and coping." —Kirkus Reviews
Birthday Girl: A woman tells her friend the story of a surreal encounter she has on her twentieth birthday with the owner of the restaurant where she works, who grants her a wish.
The Seventh Man: The story of a man scarred by the death of his childhood friend in a tsunami. "Although Murakami's style and deadpan humour are wonderfully distinctive, his emotional territory is more familiar—remorse, unresolved confusion, sudden epiphanies—though heightened by the surreal. In The Seventh Man, one of his saddest stories, the narrator recalls the wave that reared up during a freak storm and engulfed his childhood friend." —The Guardian