Norwegian Wood is the novel that propelled Murakami from being a popular storyteller to a global phenomenon. Such was the fame he attracted in Japan after it was published in 1987 that he had to leave the country, choosing to live in Europe and the US until 1995. Although I’ve read many of his novels and stories, Norwegian Wood passed me by until I saw it in a bookshop in Heathrow airport as I was browsing for something to read on a flight.

It’s not difficult to see its appeal or understand its charm. It’s a simple enough love story, though one marked by great sadness, lived by young and attractive people in Tokyo in the late 1960s. It has none of the self-conscious trickery that marks Murakami’s later fiction. It’s a story told plainly and without affectation, with the innocence and idealism of the characters coming through clearly and directly. More than thirty years after it was first published, Norwegian Wood remains fresh and vivid. It’s easy to see how it established the reputation of a writer who went on to become one of the greatest novelists working today.