Live from the Jersualem Book Fair: Murakami Takes the Stage

-- Publishers Weekly, 2/19/2009 7:42:00 AM

Continuing our on-the-ground coverage of the Jerusalem International Book Fair is this dispatch from Jason Arthur, Jerusalem Fellow and publishing director at Heinemann:  

Sunday evening: Having had three full days in Jerusalem for the North and South Americans among us to recover from jetlag and for the rest of us to acclimatize to the city, we fellows finally gathered (in the company of around 300 others) for the official opening ceremony of the book fair. The Jerusalem A Cappella Singers entertained, introductions were made and, after being welcomed to the city by the mayor, Nir Barkat, the fair was duly opened and under way. The first order of business was to award the biennial Jerusalem Prize, which goes to the writer whose work, in the eyes of the judges, best expresses the freedom of the individual in society.

Israeli president Shimon Peres was on hand to make the presentation, but it was Haruki Murakami's presence that excited those gathered in the room. News that Murakami was to be awarded the prize was met in his home country by much gnashing of teeth and threats that, should he travel to Israel to accept the award, his books would be boycotted. But the louder the calls for him to stay at home the more determined he became to attend the ceremony, explaining that he "gave it some thought... [and] decided to come. Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing." He was certainly saying something when he went on to call Peres a liar. Actually, to be fair, he called all politicians liars (and all novelists, too). The "egg and wall" metaphor that followed surely left nobody in any doubt where his sympathies lay, but there were clearly some in the audience who were expecting Murakami to go further and be more explicit in condemning Israel's recent attacks on Gaza (as Amos Oz, among many other writers, recently did). Others thought he had gone quite far enough, and the standing ovation he received from roughly half the audience was countered by the other half's seated, stony silence. In any case, Murakami joins the ranks of some of the world's finest writers from the last half a century--Coetzee, Sontag, de Beauvoir, Borges, V.S. Naipaul, Graham Greene to name but a few--a good clutch of whom have gone one to become Nobel laureates.

Any hopes that the fellows might get to meet Murakami were dashed when he was quickly ushered out of the room, and there was further disappointment when he failed to appear at the bar of the American Colony Hotel, which seems to be the unofficial hangout of those attending the fair. He had obviously been tipped off that the prize cheque of $2,000 wasn't nearly enough to stand a round of drinks there.