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  & 47 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: unknown

Tags: fantasy fiction

Description: "
Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears,"
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." ~Amazon Summary

Murakami's most famous masterpiece, with consistently interesting looks into the human psyche...

  & 29 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: unknown

Tags: fantasy scifi

Description: "The last surviving victim of an experiment that implanted the subjects' heads with"The last surviving victim of an experiment that implanted the subjects' heads with electrodes that decipher coded messages is the unnamed narrator of this excellent book by Murakami, one of Japan's best-selling novelists and winner of the prestigious Tanizaki prize. Half the chapters are set in Tokyo, where the narrator negotiates underground worlds populated by INKlings, dodges opponents of both sides of a raging high-tech infowar, and engages in an affair with a beautiful librarian with a gargantuan appetite. In alternating chapters he tries to reunite with his mind and his shadow, from which he has been severed by the grim, dark "replacement" consciousness implanted in him by a dotty neurophysiologist. Both worlds share the unearthly theme of unicorn skulls that moan and glow. Murakami's fast-paced style, full of hip internationalism, slangy allegory, and intrigue, has been adroitly translated. Murakami is also author of A Wild Sheep Chase ( LJ 10/15/89); his new work is recommended for academic libraries and public libraries emphasizing serious contemporary fiction."

One of the best surrealist novels of our time....

  & 21 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: unknown

Tags: fantasy mystery

  & 15 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: Haruki Murakami

Tags: surreal

Description: "In South of the Border, West of the Sun, the arc of an average man's life from childhood"In South of the Border, West of the Sun, the arc of an average man's life from childhood to middle age, with its attendant rhythms of success and disappointment, becomes the kind of exquisite literary conundrum that is Haruki Murakami's trademark. The plot is simple: Hajime meets and falls in love with a girl in elementary school, but he loses touch with her when his family moves to another town. He drifts through high school, college, and his 20s, before marrying and settling into a career as a successful bar owner. Then his childhood sweetheart returns, weighed down with secrets:

When I went back into the bar, a glass and ashtray remained where she had been. A couple of lightly crushed cigarette butts were lined up in the ashtray, a faint trace of lipstick on each. I sat down and closed my eyes. Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In that gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound."...

  & 14 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: unknown

Tags: fiction mystery

Description: "Immensely popular in Japan, the author's first novel to be published here is a comic"Immensely popular in Japan, the author's first novel to be published here is a comic combination of disparate styles: a mock-hardboiled mystery, a metaphysical speculation and an ironic first-person account of an impossible quest. The narrator is a modern Japanese yuppie: divorced, in a mildly exciting relationship and a much less exciting job as an ad copywriter, he lives unexceptionally until a photograph throws his life into chaos. The snapshot, which he uses to illustrate a newsletter, shows a field of sheep with one unique crossbreed, and the picture is special enough to have attracted the attention of both the nomadic friend who sent it to him and a right-wing Mr. Big who, moribund, wants the source found before he dies. The Boss's henchman, a sleek, scary majordomo, gives the narrator one month to track it down, and the story that ensues is a postmodern detective novel in which dreams, hallucinations and a wild imagination are more important than actual clues. With the help of a fluid, slangy translation, Murakami emerges as a wholly original talent. $30,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates." ...

  & 11 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: Haruki Murakami

Tags: fiction

  & 7 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Authors: Haruki Murakami Franz Kafka

Tags: fiction shortstories short.stories

Description: All the short stories, even the formerly unpublished ones, in one collection. Some of the fragmentsAll the short stories, even the formerly unpublished ones, in one collection. Some of the fragments are of questionable value, but interesting nonetheless. ...

  & 6 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Authors: Haruki Murakami Franz Kafka Stanley Appelbaum

  & 6 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: Haruki Murakami

Tags: novel wish.list

  & 3 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: —

Author: Haruki Murakami

Tags: fiction mystery japan magical_realism