Murakami Haruki is a world known Japanese writer, and was highly praised by the Guardian as one of "the world's greatest living novelists".

Murakami's fiction tends to focus on alienation but at the same time being surreal. The main characters in his books always appear to be tall, intelligent and lonely. Murakami himself is not very tall. He is about 168 cm (5'6") high. But as a Japanese, he is about average height.