Haruki Murakami Reading Order

18 books (1991–2026)

Start with Fourth Annual Collection, the first of 18 books in the Anthologies series.

#	Title
1	Fourth Annual Collection 1991Buy 🇺🇸
2	Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction 1991Buy 🇺🇸
3	The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Fourth Annual Collection 1991Buy 🇺🇸
4	40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology 2000Buy 🇺🇸
5	The Campfire Collection: Spine-tingling Tales to Tell in the Dark 2000Buy 🇺🇸
6	The Vintage Book of Amnesia 2000Buy 🇺🇸
7	Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixteenth Annual Collection 2003Buy 🇺🇸
8	Birthday Stories 2004Buy 🇺🇸
9	The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers 2005Buy 🇺🇸
10	Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone 2007Buy 🇺🇸
11	Read Real Japanese Essays 2008Buy 🇺🇸
12	Great Modern Stories 2009Buy 🇺🇸
13	Short Stories: The Thoroughly Modern Collection 2009Buy 🇺🇸
14	Stories to Get You Through the Night 2010Buy 🇺🇸
15	AQA GCSE Anthology Sunlight on the Grass 2012Buy 🇺🇸
16	Ten Selected Love Stories 2013Buy 🇺🇸
17	Writers: Their Lives and Works 2018Buy 🇺🇸
18	The Penguin Book of the International Short Story 2026Buy 🇺🇸

3 books (2023–2025)

Start with Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 1: Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, The Seventh Man, Birthday Girl, Where I'm Likely to Find It and read in order.

#	Title
1	Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 1: Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, The Seventh Man, Birthday Girl, Where I'm Likely to Find It 2023Buy 🇺🇸
2	Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 2: The Second Bakery Attack, Samsa in Love, Thailand 2024Buy 🇺🇸
3	Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 3: Scheherezade, Sleep 2025Buy 🇺🇸

1 book (2017–2017)

9 books (2000–2020)

Start with Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, the first of 9 books in the Non-Fiction series.

#	Title
1	Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche 2000Buy 🇺🇸
2	Murakami Diary 2009 2008Buy 🇺🇸
3	What I Talk About When I Talk About Running 2008Buy 🇺🇸
4	Novelist as a Vocation(With: Philip Gabriel,Ted Goossen) 2015Buy 🇺🇸
5	村上さんのところ 2015Buy 🇺🇸
6	Absolutely on Music 2016Buy 🇺🇸
7	Haruki Murakami Goes to Meet Hayao Kawai 2016Buy 🇺🇸
8	Murakami 2020 Diary 2019Buy 🇺🇸
9	Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love(With: Philip Gabriel) 2020Buy 🇺🇸

17 books (1993–2012)

Start with For Better and for Worse, the first of 17 books in the Selected Shorts series.

#	Title
1	For Better and for Worse 1993Buy 🇺🇸
2	Even More Laughs 1998Buy 🇺🇸
3	Timeless Classics 2006Buy 🇺🇸
4	Edith Wharton 2007Buy 🇺🇸
5	Falling in Love 2007Buy 🇺🇸
6	Family Matters 2007Buy 🇺🇸
7	Food Fictions 2007Buy 🇺🇸
8	Pets! 2007Buy 🇺🇸
9	Tales of Betrayal 2007Buy 🇺🇸
10	Travel Tales 2007Buy 🇺🇸
11	Are We There Yet? 2008Buy 🇺🇸
12	A Touch of Magic 2009Buy 🇺🇸
13	The William Hurt Collection 2009Buy 🇺🇸
14	Whodunit? 2009Buy 🇺🇸
15	American Classics 2010Buy 🇺🇸
16	New American Stories 2011Buy 🇺🇸
17	Poe! 2012Buy 🇺🇸

10 books (1981–2025)

Start with On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl on One Beautiful April Morning, the first of 10 books in the Short Stories/Novellas series.

#	Title
1	On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl on One Beautiful April Morning 1981Buy 🇺🇸
2	The Vampire Cabbie 1983Buy 🇺🇸
3	Desire 1984Buy 🇺🇸
4	Kangaroo Weather 1986Buy 🇺🇸
5	Sleep 1987Buy 🇺🇸
6	Tony Takitani 2006Buy 🇺🇸
7	The Strange Library 2012Buy 🇺🇸
8	Drive My Car(With: Ted Goossen) 2013Buy 🇺🇸
9	Birthday Girl 2019Buy 🇺🇸
10	Super-Frog Saves Tokyo 2025Buy 🇺🇸

6 books (1993–2020)

Start with The Elephant Vanishes, the first of 6 books in the Short Story Collections series.

#	Title
1	The Elephant Vanishes 1993Buy 🇺🇸
2	After the Quake 2002Buy 🇺🇸
3	Vintage Murakami 2004Buy 🇺🇸
4	Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman 2006Buy 🇺🇸
5	Men Without Women 2017Buy 🇺🇸
6	First Person Singular: Stories(With: Philip Gabriel) 2020Buy 🇺🇸

10 books (1985–2024)

Start with Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the first of 10 books in the Standalone Novels series.

#	Title
1	Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World 1985Buy 🇺🇸
2	Norwegian Wood 1987Buy 🇺🇸
3	The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 1997Buy 🇺🇸
4	South of the Border, West of the Sun 1999Buy 🇺🇸
5	Sputnik Sweetheart 2001Buy 🇺🇸
6	Kafka on the Shore 2005Buy 🇺🇸
7	After Dark 2007Buy 🇺🇸
8	1Q84 2011Buy 🇺🇸
9	Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage 2014Buy 🇺🇸
10	The City and Its Uncertain Walls 2024Buy 🇺🇸

4 books (1979–1988)

Start with Hear the Wind Sing, the first of 4 books in the The Rat series.

#	Title
1	Hear the Wind Sing 1979Buy 🇺🇸
2	Pinball, 1973 1980Buy 🇺🇸
3	A Wild Sheep Chase 1982Buy 🇺🇸
4	Dance, Dance, Dance 1988Buy 🇺🇸