The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel (Contemporary Fiction) (Vintage Classic Japanese)

by Haruki Murakami

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.

• ISBN10: 0679775439
• ISBN13: 9780679775430
• Publish Date: 1 September 1998 (first published 2 April 1998)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Vintage Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 624
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780679775430

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

This was my fourth Murakami novel, and while I really loved it, [book:Hardboiled Wonderland] still remains my favorite. Although both novels are dreamlike and airy, Hardboiled benefited from a solid structure. Wind-up Bird Chronicle wanders on and on and on, gaining and losing characters without much explanation. As with all Murakami's novels, this book is not for anyone who requires their fiction to be grounded in reality. To get the most out of it, you really just have to be willing to follow it wherever it goes, analyzing what you can and accepting that half of it is just going to be a big question mark.