This article appears as part of the Herald Arts newsletter.

Pop quiz: which living author’s work has been turned into at least 10 films (one a Golden Globe winner and recipient of four Oscar nominations, another featuring a soundtrack by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood) and also provided material for a video game and a piano composition, featured on a Max Richter album in passages read by Robert Wyatt no less, and been adapted for the stage by high-profile theatre companies such as Chicago’s Steppenwolf and London’s Complicité?

Here’s a clue: another stage version had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) in 2011.

The answer is Haruki Murakami, whose latest novel, The City And Its Uncertain Walls, was published in English in November. His work has sold millions of copies around the world and been translated into at least 50 languages. Drive My Car, based on a 2014 Murakami short story, was the 2021 Oscar nominee.

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This weekend it’s the turn of Scotland’s acclaimed Vanishing Point company to put the work of the now 76-year-old Japanese author on the stage when they present Confessions Of A Shinagawa Monkey at the Tramway in Glasgow. Based on a short story in Murakami’s 2020........

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