The Birthday Girl, by Haruki Murakami

The Birthday Girl, by Haruki Muraka
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Only the biggest like Murakami they can afford to launch special editions such as this illustrated story: The birthday girl.

The illustrated books have a vindictive aspect in favor of the book in its traditional paper format in addition to many other contributions. This novel also comes out in ebook, but I am sure that in this case the paper sales will exceed the digital ones. For two reasons:

  • The rarity: Being very Murakami and not getting this book accompanied by illustrations is not paying attention to the maxim that all eccentricity, rarity or difference
  • The differentiation: In addition, this novel will be published in hardcover for less than € 15. Any fervent reader of Murakami will succumb yes or yes to buying a Book with capital letters of his favorite author, with hard covers of posh work.

An illustrated book perfectly serves the cause of giving a greater physical volume to any literary composition that, otherwise, considered as a short story or novel, does not always win the sufficient and customary entity of the 100 pages at least for the printer pull rotary.

What is clear, however, is that in essence the story may end up acquiring an even greater significance and depth than the novel. Writing more or fewer pages is an imaginative and intellectual exercise, but no one said that a 20-page story couldn't be better than a 500-page story.

And from Murakami we could not expect less ... This story becomes an existential whole. It simply tells us about the twentieth birthday of a waitress who, like every celebration, has to be at the bar, until the young waitress receives an unusual order that will undo the reality of that insubstantial vital anniversary in a dreamlike transit between the wishes of the human being. who blows out his candles and hopes that finally something will change, taking the direction of unfulfilled dreams.

The person in charge of representing each of the scenes in the story is Kat Menschik, a German artist who has accompanied him on several previous occasions and in which Murakami discovered a range of darkness, a game of gray and black between the fantasy and the melancholic that, however, seem to lead you through that dreamlike space where the imagination adjusts the necessary color that emanates gushing from the story itself.

You can buy Murakami's The Birthday Girl here:

The Birthday Girl, by Haruki Muraka
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