Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

Very few writers reach the stage of being able to include in their books wry references to their failure to win the Nobel prize in literature. But, in Bech at Bay (1998), John Updike awarded his authorial surrogate, Henry Bech, the Swedish medal and cheque that Updike feared (correctly, it proved) he was doomed never to win himself. And now the 14th work of fiction by Haruki Murakami, a Nobel favourite in recent years among the bookmakers but not the judges, features a young physics student lamenting that few in his profession make much money unless they “win the Nobel prize or something”.