We imagine inspiration as a lightning strike: a perfect opening line, an unforgettable character or a plot that arrives fully formed. Sometimes it happens like that, but rarely. More often, ideas appear in fragments: a conversation overheard in a café, a song lyric overheard, an expression on a face glimpsed from a passing train or a memory that resurfaces in a moment of stillness.

Both Irving and Murakami embrace absurdity, but to different ends. Murakami uses absurdity to dissolve reality. Irving uses absurdity to heighten it.

Tim Winton has long been an icon of literature, not only for the power of his storytelling but also for the way he renders Western Australia with such visceral clarity.