Only have won the Nobel Prize in literature in the prestigious award鈥檚 history, Kenzaburo Oe in 1994, and Yasunari Kawabata in 1968. Mr. Murakami鈥檚 novels often feature defiant protagonists who run against the orderly, group mentality predominant in Japanese culture, his epic trilogy that sold four million copies in Japan in the last two years (the English translation is set to release Oct. 25). Like his protagonists, Murakami is a vocal critic of Japanese policy, particularly i. In , the International Catalunya Prize, the novelist said the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor was 鈥渁 mistake committed by our very own hands.鈥�
The Nobel recipient is often as much a political statement as it is a literary one, and Murakami鈥檚 controversial stance on nuclear power won鈥檛 go unnoticed by the judges.
