The New York–based Center for Fiction announced that Haruki Murakami is the winner of its 2025 Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award, given to “a writer who, through their exceptional body of work, has significantly shaped our culture and perspective.”
Murakami is one of Japan’s best-known authors and has a cult following around the world. He made his literary debut in 1979 with the novel Hear the Wind Sing and went on to publish more than a dozen others, including A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84. His most recent book to be published in English, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, translated by Philip Gabriel, was released last November.
He has previously won several lifetime achievement awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, the International Catalunya Prize, and the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.
“Haruki Murakami’s oeuvre has had an indelible impact on global literature and the Center for Fiction is honored to recognize his contributions to arts and culture,” the center said in a statement.
Murakami will be given the award by his friend Patti Smith, the musician and author, at a ceremony in New York on December 9.
The Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award was first presented in 2018 to Toni Morrison. The other previous winners are Kazuo Ishiguro, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, and Patrick Chamoiseau.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
