Despite one of his books, "1Q84", being ranked in Japan as the best work of fiction published in Japan's Heisei era (1989–2019), his fiction is sometimes criticised by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese. Murakami is influenced by western writers from Chandler to Vonnegut by way of Brautigan. Murakami's fiction is frequently surrealistic and melancholic or fatalistic, marked by a Kafkaesque rendition of the "recurrent themes of alienation and loneliness" he weaves into his narratives. Steven Poole of "The Guardian" praised Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists" for his works and achievements.