Haruki Murakami’s latest novel to be published in the U.S. in 2014

The Haruki Murakami book that has sold 1 million copies a week in Japan is coming to America. It has been selling spectacularly -- particularly for a work of complex literary fiction.

Publisher Knopf told Galleycat that U.S. readers can expect to get their hands on an English-language edition of Murakami’s latest novel in 2014. Spanish readers, however, are first in line: Their edition is coming out this year.

“Shikisai wo Motanai Tasaki Tsukuru to Kare no Junrei no Toshi,” was published in Japan in April. The title has been translated as “The Faded [or Colorless] Tsukuru Tasaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage.” The Times’ Julie Makinen tells Jacket Copy that “Tsukuru” also means “to make,” which means that the title might be a play on words.

That’s a question that will be answered by the definitive translation.

According to The Guardian, the book “hinges around Tsukuru Tasaki, an isolated 36-year-old man struggling to overcome the trauma of rejection by his high school friends years earlier.” The British newspaper has its own translation of the novel’s first line: “From July of his sophomore year at college to January next year, Tsukuru Tasaki was living while mostly thinking about dying.”

One of the world’s most acclaimed writers, Murakami last put out the behemoth novel “1Q84.” He’s the author of several novels, including “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” and “Kafka on the Shore” as well as the nonfiction book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.”

That last title is a play on the short story collection by Raymond Carver; Murakami is so steeped in Western literature that he translated F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” into Japanese.

Murakami has been awarded significant literary prizes from across the globe, including Prague’s Franz Kafka Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, Spain’s Catalunya Prize and Japan’s Tanizaki Prize.

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