Novelist Murakami hosts Japanese ghost story reading ahead of Nobel Prize announcements

By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has hosted a ghost story reading event in Tokyo amid growing attention before the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature. Murakami said at Thursday’s reading that he enjoys scary stories and wants to write more of them. The event featured one from the 18-century collection “Tales of Moonlight and Rain,” which is known to have inspired his work. Murakami has been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature for more than a decade. The winner of the 2023 prize is scheduled to be announced on Oct. 5. If he wins, Murakam would will be first Japanese writer since Kenzaburo Oe in 1994 to be named a Nobel laureate.