In South of the Border, West of the Sun the arc of an average man's life from childhood to middle age with its attendant rhythms of success and disappointment becomes the kind of exquisite literary conundrum that is Haruki Murakami's trademark. The plot is simple: Hajime meets and falls in love with a girl in elementary school but loses touch wi...more
This wildly propulsive novel by the acclaimed author of A Wild Sheep Chase focuses on a man searching for a former lover who vanished mysteriously from a seedy hotel. But each new clue to Kiki's whereabouts leads him deeper into a labryrinth of physical violence and metaphysical dread. "A world-class writer."--Washington Post Book World
A short, sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami’s masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore.At its center are two sisters—Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary re...more
Fifteen tales encompass the story of a man obsessed with the disappearance of an elephant from a local zoo and that of a young mother whose sleeplessness provides her with a foretaste of death.
Japan's most widely-read and controversial writer, author of A Wild Sheep Chase, hurtles into the consciousness of the West with this narrative about a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters--not to mention Bob Dylan and Lauren Bacall.
In this collection of 25 short stories, Haruki Murakami draws the reader into his wondrously addictive literary world: a fabulist land filled with illogical acts, inexplicable disappearances, and talking animals. Murakami is a master of magic-realism, but unlike his Latin-American predecessors, his stories are not lush and verdant, but rather are a...more
As with many of Haruki Murakami's novels, the plot curdles with complex diversity only to be resolved by a collision between wild fantasy and outright slapstick. A Wild Sheep Chase refers aptly to the tradition of cool but kitsch detective sagas. Except here, the metaphoric goose is now a literal sheep with a distinctive marking; an urban myth with...more
The tragic death of their best friend has a profound influence on the passionate relationship between Toru, a serious young college student in Tokyo, and Naoko, an introspective, beauty, as Toru finds himself drawn to an independent, sexually liberated young woman.