A Walk to Kobe | Haruki Murakami | Granta Magazine

A Walk to Kobe

Haruki Murakami

Translated by Philip Gabriel

‘What I’m talking about is a different sea, and different mountains.’ Haruki Murakami walks to his hometown after the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995.

Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and he has been the recipient of a host of international awards and honours including the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. He has also received honorary doctorates from the University of Liège and Princeton University.

Photograph © Elena Seibert

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Translated by Philip Gabriel

Philip Gabriel is professor of Japanese literature in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. He has translated several works by Haruki Murakami, including the novels Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84 (with Jay Rubin), Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, and most recently Killing Commendatore (with Ted Goossen). He was the recipient of the 2001 Japan–US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature for Senji Kuroi’s Life in the Cul-De-Sac, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for Kafka on the Shore.

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