Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

UK 1st edition cover
Editor	Haruki Murakami
Author	Haruki Murakami
Original title	めくらやなぎと眠る女 Mekurayanagi to nemuru onna
Translator	Philip Gabriel, Jay Rubin
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Genre	Short story collection
Published	2006 (Harvill Secker) (UK) 2006 (Knopf) (U.S.)
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	334 (UK) 352 (U.S.)
ISBN	(UK) (U.S.)
OCLC	65203792

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (めくらやなぎと眠る女, Mekurayanagi to nemuru onna^?) is a collection of 24 short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.

The stories contained in the book were written between 1980 and 2005, and published in Japan in various magazines then collections. The contents of this compilation was selected by Murakami and first published in English translation in 2006 (its Japanese counterpart was released later in 2009). Around half the stories were translated by Philip Gabriel with the other half being translated by Jay Rubin. In this collection, the stories alternate between the two translators for the most part.

Murakami considers this to be his first real English-language collection of short stories since The Elephant Vanishes (1993) and considers after the quake (2000) to be more akin to a concept album, as its stories were designed to produce a cumulative effect.

In the introductory notes to the English-language edition of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami declares, "I find writing novels a challenge, writing stories a joy. If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden." This analogy serves to give the reader some idea of what awaits.

Many of the stories in the collection have been published previously in Japanese periodicals (not listed here), then translated in literary magazines (mentioned below), although some have been revised for Blind Willow. The stories are listed below in the order in which they appear in the book. Many of the stories are translated by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin.