The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel (Vintage International) (Paperback)

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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel (Vintage International) By Haruki Murakami Cover Image
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Staff Reviews


Never get too comfortable in Murakami's universe. Toru Okada lives a mundane, introverted life. He enjoys making spaghetti, listening to opera, and ironing shirts. When Toru receives a mysterious phone call from an anonymous woman, he discovers a maze of psychic chaos hidden in the quotidian details of his life. The beauty of the story comes from the dissonance between the humdrum vignettes of Toru's life and the bizarre experiences that he has. This is a perfect book for readers who have ever lost their direction in life.

Jalen

Description


A "dreamlike and compelling” tour de force (Chicago Tribune)—an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.

Now with a new introduction by the author.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.

About the Author


Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo.  The most recent of his many honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Kobo Abe.  He is the author of the novels Dance, Dance, Dance, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and A Wild Sheep Chase, and of The Elephant Vanishes, a collection of stories.  His latest novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun, will be published by Knopf in 1999.  His work has been translated into more than fifty languages.

Praise For…


“Dreamlike and compelling.... Murakami is a genius.” —Chicago Tribune

“Mesmerizing.... Murakami’s most ambitious attempt yet to stuff all of modern Japan into a single fictional edifice.” —The Washington Post Book World

“A significant advance in Murakami’s art ... a bold and generous book.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A stunning work of art ... that bears no comparisons.” —New York Observer

“With The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami spreads his brilliant, fantastical wings and soars.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

“Seductive.... A labyrinth designed by a master, at once familiar and irresistibly strange.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“An epic ... as sculpted and implacable as a bird by Brancusi.” —New York Magazine

“Mesmerizing, original ... fascinating, daring, mysterious and profoundly rewarding.” —Baltimore Sun

“A beguiling sense of mystery suffuses The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and draws us irresistibly and ever deeper into the phantasmagoria of pain and memory.... Compelling [and] convincing.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Digs relentlessly into the buried secrets of Japan’s past ... brilliantly translated into the latest vernacular.” —Pico Iyer, Time
Product Details
ISBN: 9780679775430
ISBN-10: 0679775439
Publisher: Vintage
Publication Date: September 1st, 1998
Pages: 624
Language: English
Series: Vintage International