Japanese novelist has won this year's Jerusalem Prize, Israel's highest literary honour for foreign writers.
The 60-year-old accepted the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society from Israeli President Shimon Peres at the opening of the international book fair in the Holy City late on Sunday.
"When I was asked to accept this award I was warned from coming here because of the fighting in Gaza," the Jerusalem Post quoted the writer as saying as he accepted the 10,000-dollar (about 7,800-euro) prize.
"I asked myself -- is visiting Israel the proper thing to do? Will I be supporting one side.
"I gave is it some thought. And I decided to come. Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told.
"Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with heir own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing.
"If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg.
"Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system."
Murakami is the author of the novels The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, among many others.
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