The release date for the English version of 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running' by
Haruki Murakami is Jul 2008. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
After selling his jazz club in 1982 to focus on his work, Murakami started jogging to stay in shape. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and—even more important—on his writing.
This candid memoir, which is equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, chronicles his four months of training for the 2005 New York City Marathon. It takes us to Tokyo's Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once ran alongside an Olympian, and to Boston's Charles River among young women who outpace him. A plethora of memories and perspectives emerge through this amazing prism of sports: his epiphany moment when he made the decision to pursue writing, his biggest successes and setbacks, his love for old vinyl records, and the experience of seeing his race times increase and then decline after becoming fifty.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, for both admirers of this great but guardedly private writer and the growing number of athletes who find comparable joy in running. It is at once humorous and solemn, lighthearted and philosophical.