After the Quake

I picked this book up randomly at my public library. One of the other books by this author, Haruki Murakami, was featured by the library. As a Japanese author, Murakami has won numerous awards in Japan and abroad. His work has been featured in various U.S. magazines, such as The New Yorker. The book that I chose, After the Quake, is a series of short stories.
The short stories are based upon the 1995 earthquake that hit the city of Kobe. The author came back to Japan and was so moved by the catastrophic events of the quake that he created six short stories. The only commonality of the six stories is that the earthquake plays some minor or major role in the stories. As described, "each story is affected perhiperally by the disaster."

Murakami's writing is very poetic, but flows very easily. It is not laborious to read his work: the book is fast to read. However, I recognize that his writing is a little different than American or British writers. I don't really know how to describe it other than by saying that the scenes or analogies Murakami sets up are not as straight forward or western as American writers. As a result, it was refreshing for me to read work created by a foreign author. I can't remember the last time that I actually read work created by an artist from another country. Most of my reading are created by American writers or immigrant American writers.