Alfred Birnbaum was born in Washington D.C. in 1957 and grew up in Tokyo. He is the translator of A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. He has also translated works by Natsuki Ikezawa,Kyoji Kobayashi, Miyuki Miyabe, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa and Gen'ichiro Takahashi and compiled the anthology Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction.

High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old drop-out with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beachcombing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem.Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami"s idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance. It is an assault on the senses, part murder mystery, part metaphysical speculation; a fable for our times as catchy as a rock song blasting from the window of a sports car.