What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, By Haruki Murakami, trans. Philip Gabriel

Cult Japanese author Haruki Murakami may be the fittest novelist on earth. He started running in the 1980s, and now, in his sixties, covers six miles a day, six days a week. He has run more than 20 marathons, and completed an ultramarathon (62 miles).

This slim memoir promises to discuss the impact that all this pavement pounding has on the writer's fiction and private life – but just don't expect major revelations.

We learn that running, like writing, requires focus and endurance. It gives you shapely thighs, and can trick you into thinking you can live forever.

In characteristically muted prose Murakami re-lives his many races, moving from New York to Athens, but seems determined never to break into an all-out sweat.

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