Japanese author Haruki Murakami is releasing his first novel in three years this July, according to his publisher.

The Tale of KAHO will be published in Japan by Shinchosha on 3 July.

An e-book edition will be released the same day.

The 352-page novel is centred on a 26-year-old picture book author named Kaho, according to Kyodo News. It is Murakami’s first full-length work with a woman as the sole protagonist.

The novel is a reworked version of Murakami’s four-part “Kaho” series, originally published in the literary magazine Shincho between June 2024 and March 2026.

An early instalment from the series, translated into English by Philip Gabriel, was published in the American magazine New Yorker in 2024.

According to a synopsis, the story follows Kaho after an encounter with a male stranger who tells her: “To be honest, I have never seen anyone as ugly as you”.

Kaho, described as “neither outstandingly beautiful nor smart” but with a “rather strong curiosity”, responds with surprise rather than anger.

“What is this man trying to tell me?” she asks herself.

In an interview with the New York Times in February, Murakami offered sparse details about the novel, saying he had “recently finished” the book and that it was “currently being translated into English”.

He said he wrote much of the novel after recovering from a serious illness that left him hospitalised for a month and caused him to lose over 18kg.

“It’s kind of a resurrection,” he said, describing his return to writing. “I came back.”

Murakami said the story felt “more optimistic” than his previous work and described writing from a woman’s perspective as new territory but surprisingly natural. “I became her,” he said.

He declined to reveal plot details, saying only that “many strange things happen to her, around her”.

The Tale of KAHO is Murakami’s first novel since The City and Its Uncertain Walls, which was released in April 2023.

Murakami is one of the world’s most widely read contemporary novelists. His body of work, which spans novels, short stories, and essays, has been translated into around 50 languages and boasts a global readership far beyond Japan. His works include Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84.

In a career spanning more than four decades, he has often been referred to as a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He has received major international honours, including the Franz Kafka Prize in 2006, the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award in 2016 and Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in 2023.