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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
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  • Published: 10 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446499108
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 624
Categories:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)

Formats & editions
Paperback
3 Dec 2019
Paperback
1 Dec 2010
Paperback
1 Apr 2003
Hardback
15 Nov 2022
EBook
10 Oct 2011
Audiobook
29 Oct 2020
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A mesmerising, surreal novel - Murakami's most celebrated and influential masterpiece

*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*

Toru Okada's cat has disappeared.

His wife is growing more distant every day.

Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been 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.

'Visionary...a bold and generous book' New York Times

'Murakami weaves textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty' Independent on Sunday

'Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down' Daily Telegraph

'Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original' The Times
  • Published: 10 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446499108
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 624
Categories:

About the author

Haruki Murakami

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine 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, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.

In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

portrait photo of Haruki Murakami

Also by Haruki Murakami

The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Norwegian Wood
Kafka on the Shore
Men Without Women
Super-Frog Saves Tokyo
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
See all

Praise for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)

Murakami writes of contemporary Japan, urban alienation and journeys of self-discovery, and in this book he combines recollections of the war with metaphysics, dreams and hallucinations into a powerful and impressionistic work

Independent

Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down

Daily Telegraph

Murakami weaves these textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty

Independent on Sunday

Critics have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon - a roster so ill assorted as to suggest Murakami is in fact an original

New York Times

How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration

Independent on Sunday

[A] mesmeric story

Shortlist

Visionary...a bold and generous book

New York Times

Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original

The Times

Critics have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon - a roster so ill assorted as to suggest Murakami is in fact an original

New York Times

Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down

Daily Telegraph

Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original

The Times

Murakami weaves textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty

Independent on Sunday

Murakami writes of contemporary Japan, urban alienation and journey's of self-discovery, and in this book he combines recollections of the war with metaphysics, dreams and hallucinations into a powerful and impressionistic work

Independent

Visionary...a bold and generous book

New York Times

Discover more

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QUIZ: Which Murakami book should you start with?

Never read Murakami and wondering where to begin? Take this fun quiz to figure out which book you should read first.