Haruki Murakami is the winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature. He was born in Fushimi-Ku, Japan, in 1947.
The writer was dedicated to rock and, above all, jazz, sold records, went out at night. His characters listen to the Beatles and Italian opera records, play Uncle Vanya, drive Saabs, read Freud, are called Kafka and become obsessed with impressionist painting. They are adulterers, individualists, loners and suicides who challenge Japan's moral order.