The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

ONE OF FIVE NEW VINTAGE FUTURE CLASSIC READING GUIDE EDITIONS

INCLUDES A READING GUIDE

Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started 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.

About the Author

HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949. He met his wife, Yoko, at university and they opened a jazz club in Tokyo called ‘Peter Cat’. The massive success of his novel NORWEGIAN WOOD (1987) made him a national celebrity. He fled Japan and did not return until 1995 when he came to regard the Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo gas attack as twin manifestations of a violence just beneath the surface of Japanese life.