Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949. He met his wife, Yoko, at university and they opened a jazz club in Tokyo called Peter Cat. The massive success of his novel Norwegian Wood (1987) made him a national celebrity. He fled Japan and did not return until 1995. His other books include After the quake, Dance Dance Dance, A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Underground, his first work of non-fiction, Sputnik Sweetheart and South of the Border, West of the Sun. He has translated into Japanese the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, John Irving and Raymond Carver.

Alfred Birnbaum was born in Washington D.C. in 1957 and grew up in Tokyo. He is the translator of Dance Dance Dance and A Wild Sheep Chase. He has also translated works by Natsuki Ikezawa, Kyoji Kobayashi, Miyuki Miyabe, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa and Gen'ichiro Takahashi and compiled the anthology Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction.