Where my characters come from

I love his short stories. Try the collection "The Elephant Vanishes." It was my introduction to Murakami. It's amazing. I think it gives a good sense of the range of his wild imagination, and how quickly he can go from the ordinary to the unexpected. After that I was hooked and ended up reading almost all of his novels.

"Kafka on The Shore" was what a friend of mine, who read all their books and like him a lot, recommends me.

Hmmm... Only read two, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and "Norwegian Wood". The first was, I thought, overly dark, disturbing. The latter maybe a bit too twee? Very different from one another for sure.

Others no doubt will disagree, but I am not sure I would recommend either. To be sure though, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" had the biggest impact on me, is a wild and strange book. As an example, without giving too much away, the protagonist seems to have an unhealthy obsession with climbing down to the bottom of very deep wells (pits) and just hanging out.