Birthday Stories
Birthday Stories is a 2002 short story anthology edited by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Despite the theme's happy connotations, most of the short stories have a dark, melancholic atmosphere.
Editions
Murakami selected and translated the texts, adding an original short story of his own. For the English edition at Harvill Press, he added an introduction and selected one more story, Claire Keegan’s “Close to the Water’s Edge”. For the Japanese reprint, he added the translation of Keegan’s story, and one more story, Lewis Robinson’s “The ride”. The main editions are thus:- 2002: Japanese-language, 11 stories.
- 2004: English-language, 12 stories plus introduction.
- 2006: Japanese-language, 13 stories.
Contents
The 2004 English edition of the anthology starts with an introduction by Haruki Murakami, where he speaks about his birthday and of birthdays in general.It compiles: