The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
paperback | English
Published:
22 April, 1999
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Description
Toru Okada's cat has disappeared.
His wife is growing more distant every day.
Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been 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.
'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
'Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down' Daily Telegraph
'Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original' The Times
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9780099448792 |
| ISBN10 | 0099448793 |
| Number Of Pages | 624 |
| Item Weight | 448 g |
| Product Dimensions | 130 x 198 x 30 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Vintage Publishing |
| Format | paperback |
Media Reviews
Murakami writes of contemporary Japan, urban alienation and journeys of self-discovery, and in this book he combines recollections of the war with metaphysics, dreams and hallucinations into a powerful and impressionistic work * Independent *
Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down * Daily Telegraph *
Murakami weaves these textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty * Independent on Sunday *
Critics have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon - a roster so ill assorted as to suggest Murakami is in fact an original * New York Times *
Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original * The Times *
How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration * Independent on Sunday *
[A] mesmeric story * Shortlist *
Visionary...a bold and generous book * New York Times *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine 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, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers. Jay Rubin is the author of Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State and Making Sense of Japanese, and he edited Modern Japanese Writers for the Scribner Writers Series. He has translated into English two novels by the Japanese writer Soseki Natsume, and also Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and after the quake.