Author: Haruki Murakami
Publication Year: 1997
Pages: 607
Publisher: Knopf
For my first installment
for Old Favorites Friday, I am very excited to introduce my favorite book of
all time (or at least up to this point), The
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle!
This book is everything I
didn’t know I was missing from my life. In fact, there is a little bit in it
for everyone. It is part mystery, as the main character’s wife goes missing. It
is part fantasy, as the characters dabble in alternative realities and
dream-like realities (imagine psychic prostitutes). It is part post-modern
realism and part a history lesson. But it is all parts mesmerizing and
beautiful. This book has as much to offer as you want to look for. If you
merely wish to read it for enjoyment, it provides a story with fun twists and
turns, but if you want something deeper, this book offers a well of thought
provoking ideas and underlying themes about society and individuality.
After reading this novel,
I have slowly worked towards reading all of Murakami’s works. I am not finished
with them all, but they are simply superb. This is probably why he has been the
favorite for the Nobel Literature Prize for many, many years running. I highly
recommend Wind-Up Bird as a first
novel to jump into Murakami’s vast collection of literature as it exemplifies
many common threads of his writing and succeeds where some of his other novels
fall a little short of where I would have hoped. Of course, part of this could
also be due to the translator. Jay Rubin translated Wind-Up Bird in the edition currently available in the US. He is a
fantastic translator. He not only translates the words, but also the meaning and
prose of the original.
So if you are ready to
read about cats named after fish and mysterious wells, please, please, please
start reading this book ASAP.
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| Even Rin enjoys this book! |
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