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The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
by: Haruki Murakami

List Price: £7.99

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780099448792
ISBN: 0099448793
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 624
Publication Date: April 22, 1999
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 758

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.

Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.

If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- My favourite Murakami
I love this book - it takes me back to a place I'd forgotten. Youth, somewhere between 14 and 17yrs old. Murakami's unconnected way of looking at the world where everything is an adventure and nothing is sure. You leave motives and drives to adults and just get on with experiencing whatever comes your way. I don't think I've ever read anyone who writes in this mood and Murakami does it so well.

Rating:

- A not well structured Murakami novel
I've read quite a few books of Murakami (Kafka on Shore, after the quake, birthday stories and of course the Wind-up bird) and I consider him to be one of the best novelists out there(along with Paul Auster and Philip Roth). He has an amazing ability to narrate surreal situations in the most natural way, as if these things are happening here and now. He is also a master of bringing feelings and thoughts that we have well-buried inside us to the surface in just a few lines. Kafka is a brilliant example. Each and every word he uses is carefully chosen so as to make the novel like a very tightly woven web. Yet this is done in a seemingly effortless way that the reader (at least I! ) finds refreshing.
Having said this, I have to say that the ... Read More:

Rating:

- A New experience - So moving !!!
My son asked for the latest Murakami book for his birthday and I sent it via Amazon - I had never heard of Murakami (he has all of them he says). Then I listened to "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" as a downloaded 24 odd hour audiobook (The reader was absolutely fantastic by the way and whoever translated the original Japanese must have a fantastic ear for both languages).
When I had listened to the last of the story I felt a great sense of loss - I have seldom felt such attachment to the characterisations and mystical atmosphere Murakami has created in this wonderful book - I am trying to reduce the purchases of books as the house is over-flowing with treasures - but I simply need the Printed Book as a special talisman or spiritual object ! ... Read More:

Rating:

- A literacy masterpiece
Haruki Murakami produces an excellent written piece about Japanese culture. The novel journeys during the 20th century. In addition it explores the historical events of the country. The story is narrated beautifully, richly descriptive and entertaining. The effect is to increase reader's interest levels and attention.

The author is without any doubts one of the best to emerge from his native Japan. The author's novels are bestselling material. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle proves to be no exception. He has mastered the skill of writing to perfection and whilst reading this novel, it becomes clearly evident. The novel conisist of an interesting and a well defined plot. It focuses on your average Japanese Toru Okada, who lives in the surburbs ... Read More:

Rating:

- Stretching it somewhat
Before this, I read Norwegian Wood which is a very well written and moving book. The wind up bird chronicle is more surreal and reminds me somewhat of Garcia Marquez, which is okay if the storytelling is excellent. The book has several story lines going, and not all of them equally interesting. This undermines the urgency of the book and I wonder whether the book wouldn't have been better when the stories about the past of some of the minor characters would have been left out.

Books : The Wind-up Bird Chronicle