"I think if anything, the fact that it's popular right now makes me go: "Well, I guess I'm going to start doing something else then in the next few years." I dunno, it almost feels hackneyed at this point. To start a premise by saying, "I did this awkward thing." But then again, awkwardness and feeling alienated are always going to be a part of comedy. Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist."

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If Murakami's novels are grand enigmas, his stories are bite-sized conundrums. (...) The great pleasure of the new story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is watching Murakami come at his obsessions from so many different angles. There's a panoply of strangeness between these covers (.....) This collection shows Murakami at his dynamic, organic best. As a chronicler of contemporary alienation, a writer for the Radiohead age, he shows how taut and thin our routines have become, how ill-equipped we are to contend with the forces that threaten to disrupt us.

— Antoine Wilson