Reading List

Authors Like Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and was running a jazz bar called Peter Cat in Tokyo when, at the Yakult Swallows' opening game at Jingu Stadium in April 1978, Dave Hilton hit a double down the left-field line and Murakami decided, out of nowhere, that he could write a novel. Hear the Wind Sing came out the next year and won the Gunzo Prize for new writers. Since then: Norwegian Wood (1987), the realist love story that made him famous in Japan; Kafka on the Shore (2002); 1Q84 (2009–10); and The City and Its Uncertain Walls, which grew out of a 1980 story and reached English in November 2024. On 3 July 2026 Shinchosha published The Tale of Kaho, his first full-length novel with a lone woman at its centre. Readers come to him for a particular combination: a flat, friendly first-person voice, lonely people in ordinary city lives, and a strangeness — a well, a cat that talks, a second moon — that arrives without anyone raising their voice. The writers below share that tone, that loneliness or that matter-of-fact way with the uncanny.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Contemporary Japanese fiction · The quiet uncanny · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Haruki Murakami, start with Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen for the same gentle melancholy, and Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police for the calm, eerie strangeness. Mieko Kawakami is the Japanese novelist who once interviewed him at book length — and pushed back on how he writes women. For a Western equivalent, Paul Auster; for an English novelist who set out to do what Murakami does, David Mitchell.

10 authors like Haruki Murakami

01
The same gentle melancholy

Banana Yoshimoto

Japanese · b. 1964 · Novelist

Yoshimoto (the pen name of Mahoko Yoshimoto) was born in Tokyo in 1964. Kitchen, her debut, won the Kaien Newcomer Writers Prize and became a bestseller in Japan; Goodbye Tsugumi won the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize in 1989. Her books are short novels about grief, friendship and young people making odd, improvised families.

The closest match in mood. Yoshimoto and Murakami became famous in Japan in the same late-1980s years, and both write lonely young narrators who get through loss with small rituals — cooking, a walk at night, a phone call. She is softer and more openly tender, with less of his mystery, but the hushed, late-night tone is the same.

— Lisanne

Every book by Banana Yoshimoto →

02
Calm, eerie strangeness

Yoko Ogawa

Japanese · b. 1962 · Novelist · Akutagawa Prize 1991

Ogawa won the Akutagawa Prize for “Pregnancy Diary” and the Tanizaki Prize in 2006. The Housekeeper and the Professor (2003), about a mathematician whose memory lasts eighty minutes, won the first Japan Booksellers' Award. The Memory Police (1994), set on an island where objects and then the memory of them disappear, appeared in English in 2019 and was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020.

If what you love in Murakami is the uncanny delivered in a level voice, Ogawa does it with even more control. Her strangeness is colder and more precise — things vanish, and nobody screams — and her books are shorter and tighter than his. The Memory Police sits close to Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World in its enclosed, quietly sinister world.

— Lisanne

Every book by Yoko Ogawa →

03
His interviewer, and his critic

Mieko Kawakami

Japanese · b. 1976 · Novelist · Akutagawa Prize 2008

Kawakami was born in Osaka in 1976 and won the Akutagawa Prize in 2008 for Chichi to Ran, which she later expanded into Breasts and Eggs (2019; English 2020). Heaven, about two bullied teenagers, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022, and Sisters in Yellow appeared in English in 2026. Between 2015 and 2017 she interviewed Murakami at length for a book-length conversation published in 2017, asking him directly about women and sexualisation in his novels.

The best next writer for readers who love Murakami but have wondered about his women. Kawakami shares his clean voice, his late-night Tokyo and Osaka and his outsiders, but her narrators are women whose bodies, money and work are the story rather than its background. All the Lovers in the Night, about a lonely proofreader, is the closest to his mood.

— Lisanne
Every book by Mieko Kawakami →
04
Quiet romance, slightly off-kilter

Hiromi Kawakami

Japanese · b. 1958 · Novelist · Akutagawa Prize 1996

Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958 and won the Akutagawa Prize in 1996 for “Hebi wo fumu”, a story in which a woman steps on a snake that turns into a woman. Strange Weather in Tokyo (Sensei no kaban), about a woman in her late thirties and her former teacher who keep meeting in the same bar, won the Tanizaki Prize in 2001. Under the Eye of the Big Bird was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2025.

For readers whose favourite Murakami is Norwegian Wood or South of the Border, West of the Sun: small, melancholy love stories built from drinks, food and long silences. Kawakami's surreal side — a snake that turns into a woman — is as unannounced as his, but lighter and funnier.

— Lisanne
05
Outsiders in ordinary Japan

Sayaka Murata

Japanese · b. 1979 · Novelist · Akutagawa Prize 2016

Murata worked part-time in a Tokyo convenience store for eighteen years, until 2017. Convenience Store Woman, about a thirty-six-year-old who has worked the same shop counter since university, won the Akutagawa Prize in 2016 and was translated into English in 2018. Earthlings and Vanishing World push the same questions about normality into much darker, stranger territory.

Murakami's heroes drift out of ordinary social life; Murata's heroine refuses it outright and is calmly baffled by everyone who wants her to change. The tone is deadpan in the same way — the strangest things stated in the plainest sentences — but Murata is far more satirical, and Earthlings is much harder to read than anything of his.

— Lisanne

Every book by Sayaka Murata →

06
Memory and the unsaid

Kazuo Ishiguro

British · b. 1954 · Novelist · Nobel 2017

Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in 1954 and moved to England with his family in 1960; he writes in English. The Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize in 1989, and he won the Nobel Prize in 2017. Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun (2021) apply the same restrained first-person voice to science-fiction premises.

Not a Japanese writer but a British one, and much more formal than Murakami. What they share is a first-person narrator who cannot quite say what has happened to him, and a world that turns out to be stranger than the calm voice suggests. Readers who love the sadness under Norwegian Wood usually find it again in Never Let Me Go.

— Lisanne

Every book by Kazuo Ishiguro →

07
The ancestor

Franz Kafka

Czech · b. 1883 · Novelist and short-story writer

Kafka was a German-speaking Jewish writer from Prague who worked for an insurance institute and published little in his lifetime; The Trial and The Castle appeared after his death in 1924. His stories put ordinary clerks into absurd, unexplained situations and report them in sober, exact prose. Murakami won the Franz Kafka Prize in 2006, and the runaway boy in Kafka on the Shore takes the name Kafka for himself.

The source of Murakami's most recognisable move: the impossible event narrated as if it were paperwork. Gregor Samsa waking up as an insect and Toru Okada climbing down a well are related scenes. Kafka is bleaker and has none of Murakami's jazz, food or warmth, which makes it easier to see what Murakami added.

— Lisanne

Every book by Franz Kafka →

08
The Western counterpart

Paul Auster

American · b. 1947 · Novelist

Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1947 and died in April 2024. City of Glass, the first part of The New York Trilogy, was rejected by seventeen publishers before it appeared in 1985. He won the Prince of Asturias Award in 2006, and 4 3 2 1 was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017.

The closest equivalent in American fiction. Auster, like Murakami, borrows the detective story and empties it out: a man takes a case, follows a stranger, and loses himself, with chance and coincidence doing the work that plot usually does. Both write solitary men in big cities in plain, hypnotic prose. Start with City of Glass.

— Lisanne
09
Set out to do what Murakami does

David Mitchell

English · b. 1969 · Novelist

Mitchell was born in Southport in 1969 and taught English in Hiroshima for eight years from 1994. number9dream, about a young man looking for his father in Tokyo, and Cloud Atlas were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize. With his wife, Keiko Yoshida, he translated Naoki Higashida's The Reason I Jump from Japanese.

Mitchell has said that in his Japanese books he wanted to do what Murakami does, depicting Japan as it is. number9dream is the clearest result: a young man in Tokyo, a missing parent, dreams and video-game fantasies sliding into the real story, and a title taken from a John Lennon song, as Norwegian Wood's comes from a Beatles one. He is busier and more playful with structure than Murakami.

— Lisanne
10
The body as refusal

Han Kang

South Korean · b. 1970 · Novelist · Nobel 2024

Han Kang was born in Gwangju in 1970. The Vegetarian, about a woman who stops eating meat after a dream and is punished by her family for it, won the International Booker Prize in 2016. She won the Nobel Prize in 2024 for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”.

For readers who love the darker Murakami of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, where private strangeness opens onto historical violence. Han Kang shares his dreamlike register and his interest in people who withdraw from ordinary life, but she is far more intense and less comforting; The Vegetarian is short and leaves a mark.

— Lisanne

Every book by Han Kang →

Where to start if you loved Haruki Murakami

If you want the same late-night melancholy, read Banana Yoshimoto.

Kitchen: grief, cooking and a borrowed family, in one short novel.

If you want the quiet uncanny, read Yoko Ogawa.

The Memory Police: an island where things disappear and nobody makes a fuss.

If you want a Japanese novelist arguing with him, read Mieko Kawakami.

Breasts and Eggs, then All the Lovers in the Night.

If you want it in English, read Paul Auster.

City of Glass: a detective story that turns into a disappearance.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Haruki Murakami

Who should I read if I love Haruki Murakami?

Banana Yoshimoto and Yoko Ogawa are the closest Japanese writers in mood: Yoshimoto for the gentle melancholy, Ogawa for the calm strangeness. Mieko Kawakami, Hiromi Kawakami and Sayaka Murata are the strongest contemporary Japanese novelists to read next. Outside Japan, Paul Auster, David Mitchell and Kazuo Ishiguro share his loneliness and his matter-of-fact way with the uncanny, and Franz Kafka is the writer behind it all.

What books are like Norwegian Wood?

Norwegian Wood is Murakami's realist book, so look for quiet, melancholy love stories rather than surrealism: Hiromi Kawakami's Strange Weather in Tokyo, Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen and Mieko Kawakami's All the Lovers in the Night. Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go has the same backward-looking narrator and the same sadness.

What books are like Kafka on the Shore?

Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police and David Mitchell's number9dream are the closest: dreamlike, strange and narrated with complete calm. Franz Kafka himself, starting with The Metamorphosis, is the writer the runaway hero names himself after.

Which Haruki Murakami book should I read first?

Norwegian Wood (1987) if you want his realist side and a love story; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Kafka on the Shore (2002) if you want the full Murakami world of wells, cats and parallel realities. 1Q84 and The City and Its Uncertain Walls are better once you know his style.

Is Haruki Murakami magical realism?

He is often called that, but his strangeness works differently from Gabriel García Márquez's: it intrudes on lonely, ordinary modern lives rather than belonging to a whole community's world, and it is rarely explained. Readers often find Kafka, Paul Auster and Yoko Ogawa closer to him than the Latin American magical realists.

Does Haruki Murakami have a new book?

Yes. The Tale of Kaho was published in Japan by Shinchosha on 3 July 2026; the publisher describes it as his first full-length novel with a lone woman as its protagonist. Before that, The City and Its Uncertain Walls came out in Japan in 2023 and in English, translated by Philip Gabriel, in November 2024.

Did Mieko Kawakami interview Haruki Murakami?

Yes. Between 2015 and 2017 Kawakami recorded long conversations with Murakami about his writing, published as a book in Japan in 2017. Among other things she asked him directly about women and their sexualisation in his novels, which makes her fiction an interesting next step for his readers.

Footnotes

  1. Haruki Murakami — Wikipedia
  2. A baseball player hits a double, and it launches the career of Haruki Murakami — The World
  3. The Tale of Kaho, a Haruki Murakami novel with a female protagonist, goes on sale — AP via The Sun Chronicle
  4. The City and Its Uncertain Walls — Wikipedia
  5. Mieko Kawakami — Wikipedia
  6. Han Kang — Nobel Prize in Literature 2024
  7. Interview with David Mitchell — IndieBound
  8. Paul Auster, author of The New York Trilogy, dies — The Bookseller

List last reviewed 15 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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