Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. He has published more than a dozen novels, including Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84, and Killing Commendatore, and several short-story collections and works of nonfiction, all of which have been translated from their original Japanese into English and many other languages. The most recent of his many international honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera, and V. S. Naipaul.