Haruki Murakami's favorite books that you must read

Haruki Murakami needs no introduction. The Japanese novelist, short-story writer, and translator's deeply imaginative and often ambiguous books became international best sellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Gunzou Prize for New Writers, the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize. Over the years, Murakami has spoken to several interviewers about his five favorite books. Here's a look at them.

Set in Jazz Age New York, the novel tells the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman whom he loved in his youth. But everything changes when Gatsby befriends Nick Carraway, Daisy's cousin, and Gatsby's new neighbor, who reunites the two lovers. Then begins a tale of obsession, madness, and tragedy that unravels Jay Gatsby's life forever.

Pic credit: Penguin

It is Chandler's most personal novel. He wrote it as his wife was dying. Her illness and death had a profound effect on him, driving him into fits of melancholy and leading him to talk of and even to attempt suicide. Two characters in the novel are based on Chandler; both of them highlight Chandler's awareness of his flaws—his alcoholism and his doubts about the value of his writing.

Pic credit: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

It's the story of K. and his arrival in a village where he is never accepted, and his relentless, unavailing struggle with authorities to gain entrance to the castle that seems to rule it. K.'s isolation and perplexity, his begging for the approval of elusive and anonymous powers, epitomizes Kafka's vision of twentieth-century alienation and anxiety.

Pic credit: RHUK

Set in 19th-century Russia, it is a passionate philosophical novel that enters deeply into questions of God, free will, and morality. It is a theological drama dealing with problems of faith, doubt, and reason in the context of a modernizing Russia, with a plot that revolves around the subject of patricide.

Pic credit: Suzeteo Enterprises

The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a 17-year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection.

Pic credit: Penguin