'A story of love in a cool climate, intensely romantic and weepily beautiful-it is startlingly different- a true original' Guardian
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.
A story of love in a cool climate, intensely romantic and weepily
beautiful...it is startlingly different: a true original
*Guardian*
Casablanca remade Japanese style...It is dream-like writing, laden
with scenes which have the radiance of a poem
*The Times*
This wise and beautiful book is full of hidden truths
*New York Times*
This book aches...an eloquent treatise on the vertiginous,
irrational powers of love and desire
*Independent on Sunday*
Impressively written and structured... Above all, the novel is
memorable for its unflinchingly extreme treatment of romantic
love
*Times Literary Supplement*
Romance, accusingly bittersweet but still redemptive, is the theme of this novel written by award-winning novelist Murakami, one of Japan's most popular authors. Two only children who were schoolmates and best friends meet again after a 25-year separation. Hajime is now married, the father of two little girls and a successful owner of two jazz clubs. Shimamoto has also changed; she has become a very beautiful woman. She is always immaculately and expensively dressed, but she will not talk about her life or anything that has happened to her. Nevertheless, Hajime believes that he loves her more than life itself; he is convinced that he could leave his family and his business to be with her. After they spend a night together, a night filled with raw passion, she vanishes. Hajime is distraught. After much soul searching, he begins to put his life back together and discovers that he has become a stronger man, one who realizes that looking back is often necessary in order to move forward.‘Janis Williams, Shaker Heights P.L., OH
A story of love in a cool climate, intensely romantic and weepily
beautiful...it is startlingly different: a true original * Guardian
*
Casablanca remade Japanese style...It is dream-like writing,
laden with scenes which have the radiance of a poem * The Times
*
This wise and beautiful book is full of hidden truths * New York
Times *
This book aches...an eloquent treatise on the vertiginous,
irrational powers of love and desire * Independent on Sunday *
Impressively written and structured... Above all, the novel is
memorable for its unflinchingly extreme treatment of romantic love
* Times Literary Supplement *
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