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Murakami T
Murakami T
Jan 28, 2026 4:11 AM

Author:Haruki Murakami,Philip Gabriel,Kotaro Watanabe

Murakami T

Brought to you by Penguin.

The international literary icon opens his eclectic closet: Here are photographs of Murakami's extensive and personal T-shirt collection, accompanied by essays that reveal a side of the writer rarely seen by the public.

Haruki Murakami's books have galvanized millions around the world. Many of his fans know about his 10,000-vinyl-record collection, and his obsession with running, but few have heard about a more intimate, and perhaps more unique, passion: his T-shirt-collecting habit.

In Murakami T, the famously reclusive novelist shows us his T-shirts - including gems found in bookshops, charity shops and record stores - from those featuring whisky, animals, cars and superheroes, to souvenirs of marathons and a Beach Boys concert in Honolulu, to the shirt that inspired the beloved short story 'Tony Takitani'. Accompanied by short, frank essays that have been translated into English for the first time, these photographs reveal much about Murakami's multifaceted and wonderfully eccentric persona.

© Haruki Murakami 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reviews

Fascinating...part ode, part exhibit that reads with restrained affection for his accidental accumulations....these tees excavate an intimate history. The choices we make about what we find and keep point to our interior worlds...Murakami's understated love letters to his tees also convey how we give life to our things and vice versa.

—— Atlantic

It's safe to say there is no one like Murakami

—— Literary Review

Murakami is one of the best writers around

—— Time Out, on Norwegian Wood

Everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility

—— Guardian, on Norwegian Wood

Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original

—— The Times, on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Undeniably a somewhat eccentric book. But it's also a very likeable one... The overall effect is not unlike sharing a conversation with a genial bloke in a bar

—— Reader's Digest

One of the most influential novelists of his generation.

—— Observer

An incredibly readable and charming tour through Murakami's life through the T-shirts he has collected along the way... [the reader] feels a personal connection with him, as if we are reading his secret diary

—— Adam Davidson , Northern Echo

I highly recommend Hollow Empire . . . an incredible sequel, worth every second of waiting. It showcases one of the best (and local!) voices in fantasy. If you want a diverse, character driven story with exquisite world building and characters you would lay down your life for, do yourself a favour and pick up these books

—— WILDHEARTREADS

Viciously satisfying. Malice takes Sleeping Beauty and turns everything on its head, cutting right to the core of this bejewelled world. Heather Walter has given us a villain to adore.

—— Chloe Gong, New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights

Full of evocative detail and memorable characters

—— Zoe West , Woman & Home

Lily is a wonderful creation - diffident and trying to find her place in the world... But it's Tremain's attention to detail that really sets this novel apart

—— Ian Critchley , Literary Review

Terrific

—— Claire Allfree , Sunday Telegraph, *Novel of the Week*

An authentically melodramatic whydunnit set in Victorian London

—— Anthony Cummins , Daily Mail

Tremain has created a feisty, rebellious heroine in the style of Jane Eyre and Maggie Tulliver, in a setting that owes much to Dickens... a very engaging read

—— Vanessa Berridge , Daily Express

A heart-wrenching tale that blends historical detail, moral fable and fairy story with a powerful heroine at its helm

—— Yours, *Christmas Gift Guide 2021*

Fans of Dickens's heart-tugging Little Dorrit should enjoy this powerful exploration of the human urge to seek places of sanctuary in a pitiless, fickle world. Perfect fireside reading - but better keep a hankie ready

—— Rebecca Wallersteiner , Lady

Tremain brilliantly conjures up the atmosphere of Victorian London while the story is cleverly structured to keep the reader guessing to the end

—— Richard Hopton , Country & Town House

The 19th-century world Tremain paints a wonderfully vivid. She arouses great pity in us for Lily, enhanced here by Hattie Morahan's warm and sensitive narration

—— Julian Margaret Gibbs , Tablet

Daring and sensual, Free Love is a compulsive exploration of love, sexual freedom and living out the most meaningful version of our lives.

—— SheerLuxe

An engrossing ploy, elegant nuanced writing...this is a novel to savour

—— Morag MacInnes , Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

As ever, Ms Hadley's prose is limpid and measured yet richly sonorous: her story combines a modern sensibility with the psychological realism of writers such as Henry James... The ending glimmers with possibility--while suggesting that liberation comes at a cost.

—— Economist

With astute psychological awareness of her characters, Hadley presents a visceral and engaging picture of a bygone time. Unexpected twists and unclichéd characters support the luscious language, making this a real pleasure of a read.

—— UK Press Syndication

Free Love artfully delves beneath the veneer of the British middle class to tell an intimate story of generational discord, political change and sexual freedom.

—— Mark Vessery , i

Hadley's resplendent eighth novel... [has] poignantly astute observations on class, destiny and the false promises of the sexual revolution.

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Mail on Sunday

Hadley's eighth novel is as absorbing as any of her other fiction, with complex family secrets, brilliant insights...and lush descriptions of nature.

—— Markie Robson-Scott , Arts Desk

Hadley chooses her words with spellbinding precision.

—— Claire Allfree , Metro

Hadley's complex sentences are purring marvels of engineering... A brilliant writer of interiority...she has a gift...for portraying the state of wanting to be wanted, or simply to be seen... almost every page struck me anew with some elegant phrasing, feline irony or shrewdly sympathetic insight.

—— Anthony Cummins , Observer

Few contemporary novelists write about their characters' inner worlds with a finely filigreed but plain-spoken acuity that Tessa Hadley brings to her work...accessing roving, rich depths... Hadley is a master in her field.

—— Lucy Scholes , Daily Telegraph

"With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she's one of the greatest stylists alive. . . . To read Hadley's fiction is to grow self-conscious in the best way: to recognize with astonishment the emotions playing behind our own expressions, to hear articulated our own inchoate anxieties. . . . The whole grief-steeped story should be as fun as a dirge, but instead it feels effervescent-lit not with mockery but with the energy of Hadley's attention, her sensitivity to the abiding comedy of human desire. . . . Extraordinary.

—— The Washington Post

Brilliant.... In the hands of a lesser novelist, the intricate tangle of lives at the center of Late in the Day would feel like just such a self-satisfied riddle or, at best, like sly narrative machinations. Because this is Tessa Hadley, it instead feels earned and real and, even in its smallest nuances, important.... It's to her credit that Hadley manages to be old-fashioned and modernist and brilliantly postmodern all at once.... We've seen this before, and we've never seen this before, and it's spectacular.

—— New York Times Book Review

Utterly engrossing... Free Love is highly gratifying.

—— Ellen Peirson-Hagger , New Statesman

Free Love is a triumph.

—— Sarah Collins , Prospect

Brilliantly done... Hadley writes with devastating psychological insight, her prose spare and scalpel sharp. But she is also judiciously non-judgemental, a generous chronicler of the foibles and fears that mar and make a marriage.

—— Eithne Farry , Daily Express

Free Love is an absolute joy to read from a writer who never puts a word wrong. Fans of Small Pleasures will love it.

—— Sarra Manning , Red

[A] brilliant, sensual, seductively plotted new novel... Hadley has written an extraordinary story about love and transformation.

—— Independent

Free Love is often deeply perceptive and affecting... it lets you imagine what it was like to wrestle with old and new ways of thinking in an age that shaped (and continues to shape) our own.

—— Guy Stevenson , Literary Review

It's the 1960s and socialism, sex and nuclear anxiety have come crashing into the middle-class bubble Tessa Hadley novels usually operate so brilliant within.

—— The Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*

A story about change and its limits, its beautifully judged ending will bring you to tears.

—— Daily Mail, *Summer Reads of 2022*

[An] acutely realised, deeply humane novel... Unmissable.

—— Tablet, *Summer Reads of 2022*

No novel published this year gave me more pleasure than Tessa Hadley's Free Love.

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

Nothing drew me in as conclusively as Free Love by Tessa Hadley, who is surely one of our most astute and deft observers of everyday lives.

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

Hadley's novels continue to get better and better - and this is her finest, most pleasurable yet... it's near enough the perfect present in book form

—— Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*

She is, in all her mastery of the craft, a writer's writer.

—— Marie Claire
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