A Japanese magical mystery tour

He may not exactly be a household name over here yet, but in his native Japan, Haruki Murakami is a literary celebrity. His quirky, tender novel named after the Beatles song Norwegian Wood was an overnight sensation on its publication in 1987 and went on to sell more than three million copies in Japan alone.

Since then, his fiction has begun to spread around the world in translation, as different countries discover the universal, original charm of his writing. When his last book, Sputnik Sweetheart, appeared, many tipped him as a potential future Nobel Prize winner.

All this attention, though, seems to have caused nothing but trouble for the author. In this intriguing biography by one of his American translators, which offers a quick jaunt through his story so far (he's still only 53), Murakami emerges as a very reluctant star. Craving peace, quiet and a chance to continue with his writing, he and his wife fled from Japan for several years after his sudden success, and sought anonymity in Italy, the Greek islands and the US, before returning to Tokyo in 1995.

Throughout this book, his life comes across as almost spectacularly uneventful, while his work is just the opposite.

"Please bear with me if I seem to be having too much fun," writes Rubin in the foreword, before taking us on a magical mystery tour through Murakami's spontaneous, improvised fictional world, and introducing us to his characters.

Like their creator, described by his biographer as "easygoing, a beer-and-baseball kind of guy", they tend to be likeable, ordinary, lackadaisical types, who seem to spend their days endlessly cooking spaghetti and thinking "Hmmm", until something surreal (a phone call leading to a quest for a certain sheep, or an unbelievable trip to another world) strikes out of the blue.

Rubin's portrait of the artist as a young man ("he was a nice boy from a quiet suburb") soon begins to read like one of Murakami's novels, an effect which becomes more pronounced as the book goes on. It's packed with bits of trivia about the author, but somehow remains oddly detached. We learn that Murakami owns more than 6,000 jazz records, once saw at least 200 films in one year as a student, enjoys "a broad repertory of cuisines, though Italian is probably his favourite", allows himself the occasional Alfa Romeo or Mercedes, but often drives a less ostentatious Honda Accord, and had run 16 marathons by 1999.

There are also several prolonged attempts by Rubin to decode the recurring symbols and riddles that crop up throughout Murakami's books: wells, corridors, unicorns, elephants, and other animals. He's not given much help by the author, who seems to be very coy about the meaning of his work, and responds to his biographer's interrogations by chuckling, and saying things like "that is one strange story". As a result, by the end you still don't feel you know this fascinating writer any better. But no doubt he wouldn't have wanted it any other way.