The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Paperback, 607 pages

Langue : English

Publié 1 septembre 1998 par Vintage International.

ISBN :: 978-0-679-77543-0
Numéro OCLC :: 39915729

(1 critique)

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces …

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon. --back cover

24 éditions

iddcutie a publié une critique de The Wind-up Bird Chronicle par Haruki Murakami

I just like it, okay?

4 étoiles

I'm not entirely sure what keeps drawing me back to Murakami's work. I think perhaps its how he blends mundanity with the surreal, and his unique prose (or at least, what uniqueness is able to be translated.) But even those reasons seem lacking. There's something more ineffable at play as to why I like his work, and that is to say, I just like it. Or at least, right now, I do not have the words to describe my pull towards his work, and why I loved this book especially, but maybe I can say that it's akin to Toru Okada's mysterious pull toward the well. Or really, I just need to let The Wind Up Bird Chronicle marinate my brain for a bit, reread it a few times, before I can give it a proper review.

Sujets

Man-woman relationships -- Japan -- Fiction
Japan -- Fiction
Japan -- Politics and government -- Fiction