Haruki Murakami has a new book coming out and fans know what to expect – for the most part

A new novel by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami is set to hit bookshops this summer. The Tale of KAHO is an expansion of four interlinked short stories first serialised in the Japanese magazine Shincho, starting in 2024. Only the first of these stories, Kaho, has as yet been translated into English, by Philip Gabriel for The New Yorker.

The story’s narrator, Kaho, is a 26-year-old woman who illustrates children’s picture books. She has a bad date with a sinister man named Sahara, who delights in telling women that they are ugly.

Kaho is a slight narrative that gives a strong impression of two characters: an emotionally complex young woman and a voyeuristic misogynist. In a 2024 interview with The New Yorker, Murakami mused on the possibility of expanding this story. Now that he has done so, what can readers expect?

Murakami’s harshest critics and most passionate fans disagree on the merits of his literary output. But they surely agree on one point: Haruki Murakami is a repetitive writer.

Fans have rendered this repetition a feature, not a flaw, making Murakami memes and fan art out of this tendency. One fan, artist Grant Snider, even affectionately created a Murakami bingo game that resurfaces every time the writer releases new material.

Murakami bingo is a fun way of interacting with his work. The idea...

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