The Wind Up Bird Chronicle

£7.99

In his increasingly surreal canon of work, “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” is probably his most popular and widely read text. It resonates with contemporary Japan, exploring responsibility for both the past and the present, and also the effects of alienation and isolation- as usual though, Murakami goes about this by making some of the most mundane everyday moments unconventional, viewing them with a lyrical wit that can only be described as surreal and, at times, morbidly comic.

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.

At first seemingly a mixture of different threads, Murakami slowly weaves them into a novel of considerable depth, exploring in particular detail how Japan of the late 20th century reconciles with and bears responsibility for Japan of the early 20th century, something that even Western authors seem tentative to do. Touching, humorous, witty and dark, view the world of emotions in a lyrically unconventional way: through the mind of Haruki Murakami.