Editions

Page /
100%
  1. Home
  2. Fiction Books
  3. Birthday Girl
Birthday Girl

Birthday Girl

Birthday Girl is a beguiling, exquisitely satisfying short story . A taste of master storytelling, published to celebrate Murakami's 70th birthday.

She waited on tables as usual that day, her twentieth birthday. She always worked Fridays, but if things had gone according to plan on that particular Friday, she would have had the night off.

One rainy Tokyo night, a waitress's uneventful twentieth birthday takes a strange and fateful turn when she's asked to deliver dinner to the restaurant's reclusive owner. Birthday Girl is a beguiling, exquisitely satisfying taste of master storytelling, published to celebrate Murakami's 70th birthday.

Birthday Girl is also available in Birthday Stories and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Reviews

  • A subtle story that leaves readers analysing every moment… It's undoubtedly a story you can read again and again and derive a different interpretation with each new reading, which just goes to show why it's still being published and talked about nearly 20 years after it was first published

    Culturefly

More from this Author

View all View all
View all View all

About the Author

Haruki Murakami

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

Haruki Murakami

Read more

/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2020/july/Tokyo-main-image-1800x1200 .jpg

Recommendations

Book your holiday: Tokyo

Tokyo has inspired all manner of writers, from home and abroad, seeking to evoke its unique atmosphere over the years.
/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2019/december/JC_article_promo_safe_area.jpg

Competitions

Win a VINTAGE Japanese book bundle
/content/dam/prh/articles/adults/2018/september/Murakami killing commendatore APC 1 no branding.png

Extracts

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

Read an extract from the epic new novel by the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore.

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies to make our website work. If you click 'Accept All’ we will use cookies to understand how you use our services and to show you personalised advertising and other content. You can change your cookie settings by clicking 'Manage Cookies'. For more information please see our Cookie Policy

Our Use of Cookies

We use cookies on this site to enable certain parts of the site to function and to collect information about your use of the site so that we can improve our visitors’ experience.

For more on our cookies and changing your settings click here

Strictly Necessary

Strictly Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions. See More.

Analytics

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. These cookies may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. See More.

Preferences & Features

Preference and Feature cookies allow our website to remember choices you make, such as your language preferences and any customisations you make to pages on our website during your visit. See More.

Targeting / Advertising

Targeting cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you and your interests. They perform functions like preventing the same content from reappearing, ensuring ads are displayed and, in some cases, selecting content based on your interests. See More.