Culture Talk

Never read Ryu Murakami. Where do I start, now that he's gone?

I'm embarrassed to say I knew the name mostly because people kept mixing him up with Haruki! The GONOM piece on his death made me realise what I've been missing. Almost Transparent Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, and then Coin Locker Babies, 69, In the Miso Soup, and Audition, which became that Takashi Miike film everyone warns you about!

The article quotes Open saying he wasn't an author who made readers comfortable. Fair enough, I'm a researcher, I can handle uncomfortable. But I'd rather not start with the most brutal one and give up.

Where would you start? And is it true a lot of his books still aren't in English?