Murakami at Berkeley this weekend; lecture + symposium

This past spring we published A Wild Haruki Chase: Reading Murakami Around the World. This book was compiled and edited by The Japan Foundation and contains an introduction by Jay Rubin as well as essays by Richard Powers, Shozo Fujii, Roland Kelts, and others, as well as a special essay on translation by Haruki Murakami. We're happy to announce that the book has been very well received, and we are now about to reprint it. (Copies may be in short supply, but should still be available on Amazon and in the bookshops that were farsighted enough to order them in the first place!)

And now, if you live in or near Berkeley, California, you can experience the Murakami phenomenon first hand!

As part of the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Center for Japanese Studies, Haruki Murakami will present a reading and lecture in Japanese and English, to be followed by a conversation with Roland Kelts. The presentation will take place on Saturday, October 11, 2008, at Zellerbach Hall on the Berkeley campus.

From the event description: "The author's numerous works, which have been translated into 36 languages, lead the reader along the interstices between the mundane and the sublime. His work has been described as easily accessible, yet profoundly complex. Murakami's reading and lecture in Japanese and English will be followed by a conversation with Roland Kelts (Tokyo University lecturer and author of Japanamerica) and a question and answer period with the audience."

The next day, Sunday, October 12, at The Alumni House on the Cal Campus, there will be a special program examining Murakami's works in translation.

This event is free and open to the public.

Japanese Literature on the Global Stage
The Murakami Symposium
Sunday, October 12
10:00 AM-1:00 PM
Alumni House

Panel:

"Crazed Translator Gives Japanese Author Excedrin Headache"
Jay Rubin (Harvard Univ.)

"Lost in Translation? Murakami Haruki and the Japanization of the English Language"
Rebecca Suter (Univ. of Sydney)

"A Spatial Odyssey or, It‚s All Greek to Me: East Meets West in Murakami Haruki's Kafka On the Shore"
Matthew Strecher (Winona State Univ.)

"Are There Any More Like You at Home? Cloning Murakami Haruki for the US Market"
Stephen Snyder (Middlebury College)

Moderated by H. Mack Horton (UC Berkeley) and Alan Tansman (UC Berkeley)