‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage’ by Haruki Murakami (trans. Philip Gabriel)

His name carries a cultural cachet rarely granted writers today, much less those of the literary variety. As a brand, Haruki Murakami infiltrated the West with the English translation of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997), but in his native Japan he had been a celebrity since Norwegian Wood (1987). His latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, sold a million copies in its first week in Japanese bookstores. Add to those figures his status as a perennial favourite for the Nobel prize in literature, and then ponder the last time Murakami had a Western equivalent.

Three years after publishing his multi-volume 1Q84, Murakami offers a slim novel about identity and friendship in contemporary Japan. Tsukuru Tazaki, with dreams of designing railroad stations, leaves his close-knit circle of friends in Nagoya to attend...