The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Hardcover, 611 pages

English language

Published July 14, 1997 by Alfred A. Knopf.

ISBN:
978-0-679-44669-9
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
36510552

View on OpenLibrary

5 stars (2 reviews)

With three novels and one short-story collection now translated into English, Haruki Murakami has emerged as the most significant Japanese novelist in decades. And with this hugely ambitious new book—a true magnum opus, equal in scope and execution to Yukio Mishima's posthumous tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility—he will take his place in the inter- national pantheon of contemporary literature.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is many things: the story of a marriage that mysteri- ously collapses; a jeremiad against the su- perficiality of contemporary politics; an investigation of painfully suppressed memo- ries of war; a bildungsroman about a com- passionate young man's search for his own identity as well as that of his nation. All of Murakami's storytelling genius—combining elements of detective fiction, deadpan humor, and metaphysical truth, and swiftly transforming commonplace realism into sur- real revelation—is on full, seamless display. And in turning his literary imagination loose on a broad …

25 editions

Re-read after 20 years and it hits way differnt

5 stars

Weird and brilliant, the book constantly tempts you into decoding it’s meaning, and then immediately pulls the rug out from under your mind-feet.

I also felt like I needed a giant white board to track the seemingly endless inter-connections, parallels, and metaphors, but I’m not sure a large enough white board exists, and even if it did I’d probably just end up with a giant mess of ideas rendered less beautiful than the novel itself. All that said, his writing about female sexuality is weird and deeply uncomfortable.

Subjects

  • Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
  • Japan -- Fiction