The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: Haruki Murakami

by Haruki Murakami (Author), Haruki Murakami (Author)

New
Paperback
1999
$12.56

Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.

Synopsis

Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.

$12.56

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 624
Edition: 1
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 22 Apr 1999
ISBN 10: 0099448793
ISBN 13: 9780099448792
Book Overview: A mesmerising, surreal novel - Murakami's most celebrated and influential masterpiece

Media Reviews

It's a bizarre trip and I like it for the exact opposite reason that I like Belsky's book. That book is entirely practical in terms of life work strategies and this book is like a David Lynch film in a book. -- Pam Fujimoto * Drum *
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami is a breath of originality. Murakami is known for his unusual blend of the mundane and the fantastical, and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle epitomises this style. This book is my favourite because it really resonated with me, the way it links together seemingly unrelated ideas into a meaningful story is incredibly unique. -- Senan Tuohy-Hamill * University Observer *
Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down * Daily Telegraph *
Visionary...a bold and generous book * New York Times *
Murakami weaves textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty * Independent on Sunday *

Author Bio

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami's unique and addictive fictional universe. Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring Murakami's place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.