His typical main character is a detached observer.
The publishing house "Eksmo" has notified its partners about the withdrawal from sale of the novel "Kafka on the Shore" by the most popular writer in Japan, Haruki Murakami. This was first reported by "Kommersant" citing a source. According to the publication's interlocutor, the decision is explained by "reducing potential legal risks." The book is being removed from circulation across the country. Currently, all versions of the novel — print, electronic, and audiobook — are unavailable for sale on the "Eksmo" online store, as noted by "Ъ."
Later, the information was confirmed by the publishing house itself. The general director of "Eksmo," Evgeny Kapyev, stated to TASS that sales have indeed been suspended. According to him, the claims against the book arose from the prosecutor's office of the Kyiv district of Simferopol in the annexed Crimea. "We have indeed suspended sales of the book. The reasons are not disclosed yet; we need to sort it out," he said, adding that the work has been sent for examination.
"Kafka on the Shore," published in 2002, became the ninth novel by Haruki Murakami and one of the most famous in his bibliography. The plot centers around a teenager, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home due to a dark prophecy from his father, and an old man, Nakata, who, as a child during World War II, witnessed an unidentified flying object over the village where he was evacuated. The fates of the characters intertwine under the influence of prophecies, mystical messengers, and cats. The novel received the World Fantasy Award and was also included in the top ten books of 2005 according to The New York Times.
Haruki Murakami is considered the most popular writer in Japan. His works have been translated into more than 50 languages, and total sales are in the millions of copies. By 2022, the total circulation of his books published since 2004 in Russia reached nearly 4.6 million copies. After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the writer publicly supported Ukraine. In 2024, Roskomnadzor included his novels "Norwegian Wood" and "My Favorite Sputnik" in the list of banned books in Russia as "promoting non-traditional relationships" — as part of the law prohibiting "LGBT propaganda."
This is not the first case of Russian authorities fighting literature. In December 2025, law enforcement demanded the removal from shelves of the 1969 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness," whose characters can change their gender. In November, the AST publishing house withdrew Stephen King's novel "It" due to a complaint about the description of "non-traditional relationships," after which AST's general director, Tatyana Gorskaya, announced a check of books using AI for "LGBT propaganda."
In February 2024, journalist Alexander Plyushchev published a list of 252 works subject to confiscation in Russia. The list included King's "It," Hanya Yanagihara's "A Little Life," Boccaccio's "The Decameron," Plato's "The Symposium," and even Dostoevsky's "Netochka Nezvanova." The authenticity of the list was confirmed by "Megamarket." Additionally, in December 2025, the largest book service "Litres" removed about 4,500 books from sale due to risks of fines under the "drug propaganda" law.
Time magazine named Haruki Murakami (77) one of the most influential people on Earth. In his homeland, the writer has been accused of being a "non-Japanese author." His books have been translated into dozens of languages and are sold in millions of copies worldwide.
Throughout his career, the writer has published more than 20 novels as well as collections of short stories. Among the most famous are "Norwegian Wood," "Kafka on the Shore," "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," "The Ghosts of Lexington," and "After Dark."
His typical main character is a detached observer, notes The Guardian. He is a calm, socially withdrawn, and often nameless man in his early thirties. The protagonist often "seems more intrigued than disturbed when an inexplicable phone call or the search for a lost cat leads him into a fantastical parallel universe populated by exploding dogs, men in sheep costumes, mysterious teenage girls, and faceless people."
"When I was a teenager in the 1960s, it was an era of idealism," Murakami recalled. "We believed that the world would become better if we tried. Today, people do not believe in that, and I think it's very sad," the writer noted. "People say my books are strange, but besides these strangeness, the world should be better. We will have to experience this strangeness before we reach a better world. This is the main message of my stories: you will have to go through the darkness, through the dungeon, before you get to the light."
