Murakami Bestselling writer of the Japanese absurd - by article from Channel NewsAsia TOKYO : Haruki Murakami, whose new novel "1Q84" is proving a worldwide phenomenon, describes himself as "the black sheep of the Japanese literary world" for his absurdist take on the spiritual emptiness of modern life. In Japan the first two volumes of "1Q84", which can be read as "1984" in Japanese, came out in 2009, becoming a bestseller even before hitting the stores on the back of massive advance orders, and clearing a million sales within a month. The third volume went on sale in Japan last year, boosting the number of copies of the popular series to more than 3.85 million, according to its publisher Shinchosha Publishing Co. But the release of the foreign language translations of the book, his first in five years, have also come amid a blaze of excitement, garnering the sort of attention usually reserved for the Harry Potter series. In France,