These eight stories, all told in the first person, showcase Haruki Murakami’s reality-bending skills at their very finest. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios and imaginary jazz albums, together these tales challenge the boundary between the mind and the real world. Here we encounter men having a beer with a talking monkey, analyzing tanka poems written by a former lover, and in the throes of Beatlemania.  And, occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself. Philosophical and mysterious, the stories in First Person Singular all touch beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory . . . with a signature Murakami twist.