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 Publisher for the Japanese novelist says he will answer ‘questions of any kind’ from readers on his own website 
 
 Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is to offer advice to troubled readers in an agony uncle column on his website, his publisher said Tuesday. 
 
 
 
 The website, named “Murakami-san no tokoro” or “Mr. Murakami’s place” will solicit problems from fans of the surrealist, whose novels are published in dozens of languages around the world. 
 
 The publicity-shy writer will pen answers to queries, offering his opinions and advice on how to tackle all manner of difficulties, said Shinchosha Publishing. 
 
 “He will receive questions of any kind,” a company spokesman said, adding that he will answer queries written in a variety of languages. 
 
 Murakami will also answer fans’ questions on his likes and dislikes - including cats, a favourite animal of his, and the Yakult Swallows, the Japanese baseball team he supports. 
 
 Problems and queries will be accepted until the end of January, and Murakami’s answers will be published over the following two months. 
 
 The scheme echoes a similar project in 2006, and offers a rare chance for Murakami’s legions of fans to communicate directly with a writer who spends much of his time hiding from the glare of the media. 
 
 “After so long, I want to exchange emails with readers,” Murakami was quoted by the publisher as saying. 
 
 Murakami is one of Japan’s best known writers and has repeatedly been tipped as a future Nobel Literature laureate. 
 
 The 65-year-old, who reportedly spends much of his time in the United States, has a cult following for his intricately-crafted tales of the absurdity and loneliness of modern life, and peppers his work with references to pop culture. 
 
 The website’s URL or email address for questions is not yet available, the publisher’s spokesman said. ||||| Japanese writer Haruki Murakami receives the ''XXIII Premi Internacional Catalunya'' prize from Catalunya's Regional President Artur Mas during an awards ceremony in Barcelona, June 9, 2011. 
 
 TOKYO Worried about your future, the meaning of life or the realness of unreal things? Ask Japanese author Haruki Murakami for enlightenment - or as much as a surrealist can give. 
 
 Though a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Murakami is so notoriously reclusive that nobody knows for sure where in the world he lives, and he has joked about biting fans who get too close. 
 
 But for a short period this spring, the global bestselling author, 65, will take any and all questions posed to him by readers, answering those that pique his interest, his publisher Shinchosha said on Tuesday. 
 
 "He likes to engage with readers, but there's so much interest it's hard for him to interact well. This should be smoother," a company spokeswoman added. 
 
 The company will take questions from Jan 15 to 31, and Murakami's responses will run until the end of March on a special page called "Murakami's Place" on the company's website. 
 
 Born in Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto to schoolteachers, Murakami's often surreal books have been translated into more than 50 languages and feature characters bonding through pain. He has lived in self-imposed exile for years and is often a harsh critic of his home country. 
 
 His most recent novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage", was an instant bestseller that had Japanese fans queueing to buy it at a midnight release in 2013. 
 
 Murakami is known to be a passionate runner, fan of cats and devout supporter of Tokyo's Yakult Swallows, a perennially cellar-dwelling baseball team, and questions are likely to touch on these topics as well as literature, the spokeswoman said. 
 
 "We expect there to be some rather strange questions as well," she added. "Which ones he answers depends on him." 
 
 (Editing by Tony Tharakan) ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Kazuo Ishiguro talks to BBC arts editor Will Gompertz 
 
 British writer Kazuo Ishiguro has won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature. 
 
 The novelist was praised by the Swedish Academy as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world". 
 
 His most famous novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go were adapted into highly acclaimed films. He was made an OBE in 1995. 
 
 The 62-year-old writer said the award was "flabbergastingly flattering". 
 
 He has written eight books, which have been translated into over 40 languages. 
 
 When contacted by the BBC, he admitted he hadn't been contacted by the Nobel committee and wasn't sure whether it was a hoax. 
 
 He said: "It's a magnificent honour, mainly because it means that I'm in the footsteps of the greatest authors that have lived, so that's a terrific commendation." 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC producer Elizabeth Needham-Bennett is the first to tell Kazuo Ishiguro he's won 
 
 He said he hoped the Nobel Prize would be a force for good. "The world is in a very uncertain moment and I would hope all the Nobel Prizes would be a force for something positive in the world as it is at the moment," he said. 
 
 "I'll be deeply moved if I could in some way be part of some sort of climate this year in contributing to some sort of positive atmosphere at a very uncertain time." 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Carey Mulligan starred in the film version of Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go 
 
 Who is Kazuo Ishiguro? 
 
 Born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, he moved to England with his family when his father was offered a post as an oceanographer in Surrey 
 
 He read English and philosophy at the University of Kent after a gap year that included working as a grouse beater for the Queen Mother at Balmoral 
 
 He studied an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where his tutors were Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter 
 
 His thesis became his critically acclaimed first novel, A Pale View of Hills, published in 1982 
 
 He won the Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day 
 
 More on Kazuo Ishiguro from BBC Arts 
 
 Image copyright REX/Shutterstock Image caption The Remains of the Day was turned into an Oscar-nominated film with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson 
 
 His work, which includes scripts for film and television, looks at themes of memory, time and self-delusion. 
 
 The Nobel committee praised his latest book The Buried Giant, which was released in 2015, for exploring "how memory relates to oblivion, history to the present, and fantasy to reality". 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Fans gathered in Tokyo in the hope of celebrating Haruki Murakami, who had been the bookies' favourite - but ended up celebrating Ishiguro's win 
 
 Image copyright AFP/getty Image caption Kazuo Ishiguro was inundated with members of the press at his north London home after his award was announced 
 
 Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, described his style as "a little bit like a mix of Jane Austen, comedy of manners and Franz Kafka". 
 
 She said Ishiguro was a writer of "great integrity", adding: "He doesn't look to the side. He's developed an aesthetic universe all of his own." 
 
 The Nobel comes with a prize of nine million kronor (£844,000, $1.1m). 
 
 Kazuo Ishiguro's gift - by BBC arts editor Will Gompertz 
 
 For me, he is one of the great living writers working in any language. All writers can tell stories. Ishiguro tells stories on another level. 
 
 He places the reader in some sort of alternative reality - which might be the future, it might be the present, it might be the past. They feel like places that are whole and real, but you don't know them. 
 
 They're weird and not necessarily happy places. But they're places that you can inhabit and relate to, and you become deeply involved with the characters. That's the writer's job - he just does it better than most. 
 
 Read Will's full blog post. 
 
 Image copyright AFP 
 
 Kazuo Ishiguro - his books at a glance 
 
 His first novel A Pale View of Hills was about a Japanese woman living in England trying to come to terms with her daughter's death 
 
 was about a Japanese woman living in England trying to come to terms with her daughter's death He followed that with An Artist of the Floating World in 1986 
 
 in 1986 The Remains of the Day tells the story of a butler in a stately home whose boss was a Nazi sympathiser 
 
 tells the story of a butler in a stately home whose boss was a Nazi sympathiser His only book of the 1990s was The Unconsoled , which was followed by When We Were Orphans in 2000 
 
 , which was followed by in 2000 2005's Never Let Me Go followed a group of students at a boarding school living in a dystopian future. It was turned into a film starring Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan five years later 
 
 followed a group of students at a boarding school living in a dystopian future. It was turned into a film starring Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan five years later Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall was a collection of stories published in 2009 
 
 was a collection of stories published in 2009 His most recent novel was The Buried Giant in 2015 
 
 in 2015 Ishiguro has also written a number of screenplays, including The White Countess and The Saddest Music in the World, as well as other short stories 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Meet the Author: Kazuo Ishiguro 
 
 Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
– Who better to offer advice to the lovelorn, the beleaguered, and the downtrodden than a hermit-like Japanese novelist? That's the plan for Haruki Murakami, known recluse and one of Japan's most famous writers, his publisher said today, per the Guardian. According to Shinchosha Publishing, the 65-year-old surrealist author will serve as what the Brits call an "agony uncle" on a page called "Murakami's Place" on its website, dispensing wisdom in response to questions submitted by readers from Jan. 15 through Jan. 31, Reuters reports. He'll tackle "questions of any kind," a company rep says per the Guardian. "After so long, I want to exchange emails with readers," Murakami is quoted as saying by Shinchosha, with the rep adding to Reuters that "he likes to engage with readers, but there's so much interest it's hard for him to interact well. This should be smoother." Marukami once referred to himself as "an endangered species [that] may get intimidated and bite" if people got too close to him, the New Statesman reported in 2013. No one's sure where the self-banished Murakami—often brought up as a possible Nobel Prize candidate—lives, though the Guardian notes he "spends much of his time" in the US; the New Statesman claims he resides in both Japan and Hawaii. Some of the Qs he may receive will likely touch on some of his favorite topics, including cats and the Yakult Swallows, a pro Japanese baseball team. Or they may be more fitting for a writer known for what the Guardian calls "intricately-crafted tales of the absurdity and loneliness of modern life": "We expect there to be some rather strange questions," the rep says, per Reuters. "Which ones he answers depends on him." (Hopefully it will turn out better than this lad-mag column.)