Haruki Murakami, the acclaimed Japanese author, will publish his first novel featuring a woman as the sole protagonist this summer. Titled The Tale of Kaho, the book is set for release in Japan on 3 July, with an ebook edition available the same day. A UK edition has yet to be announced.
The 352-page novel centres on Kaho, a 26-year-old picture book author. It is a revised and expanded version of a four-part series originally published in the literary magazine Shincho between June 2024 and March 2026. The first instalment, translated into English by Philip Gabriel, appeared in The New Yorker in 2024. The story opens with Kaho on a blind date, where a man tells her: “I’ve dated all kinds of women in my life, but I have to say I’ve never seen one as ugly as you.”
Murakami, 77, has faced consistent criticism for his portrayal of women, often accused of reducing female characters to sexualised or one-dimensional objects. In a 2004 interview with The Paris Review, he described women in his stories as “mediums – harbingers of the coming world”. However, in a February interview with The New York Times, he described writing from a woman’s perspective as “unfamiliar but natural”, adding: “I became her.” He described Kaho as “a very ordinary girl, not so pretty, not so smart”, but noted that “so many strange things happen to her, around her”.
The Tale of Kaho follows Murakami’s previous novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls, published in the UK in 2024. In October, Penguin will release Abandoning a Cat, an essay about his father, also translated by Gabriel. Murakami has written 15 novels over 47 years, with works including Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84. He has won several international awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize, and is frequently cited as a Nobel literature contender.
