Testing a Murakami Theory on Writing

In his preface to his twin novels ‘Hear the Wind Song’ and ‘Pinball’, the great contemporary novelist from Japan, Haruki Murakami, makes a very interesting observation by saying that he developed his own style of writing by first writing his initial novel in English, and then sort of translating it back into Japanese. According to him, since his vocabulary in English was limited, he could express himself in a more succinct manner, whereas while writing in one’s mother tongue since one has access to a treasure of vocabulary and expressions and idioms, one’s ideas get lost, as it were, in verbosity. This is a remarkable observation and puts the argument of writing in one’s mother tongue completely on its head. <a href="https://medium.com/@kumarvikram/i-am-sharing-an-old-post-11-february-2019-from-my-facebook-timeline-for-the-benefit-of-medium-7bb8beb8437b">Learn More</a>