Haruki Murakami Resources - a wind up bird chronicle

a wind up bird chronicle (ねじまき鳥クロニクル, Nejimaki-dori Kuronikuru)

First published in Japan by Shinchosha
(1994-95 in three volumes)

English translater: by Jay Rubin

US Edition:
Paperback: 624 pages
Publisher: Vintage (September 1, 1998)
ISBN-10: 0679775439

UK Edition:
Paperback: 624 pages
Publisher:Vintage (22 April 1999)
ISBN-10:0099448793

buy from amazon.co.uk
buy from amazon.com

But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathed, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at 4 o'clock in the morning.

excerpt available on the Random House site

synopsis

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. (from amazon.com)

** There is a new edition of Wind Up Bird available from Vintage in August (2007). There are ten Vintage Classics to collect. Each twin consists of two books: a specially designed limited edition of one modern classic title and one established classic work. The books in each pair have been carefully selected to provide a thought-provoking combination. Publisher: Vintage Classics (2 Aug 2007)ISBN-10: 0099511401

articles

Murakami Haruki: The Simulacrum in Contemporary Japanese Culture by Michael Seats - chapter on HTWS - except available from Google Book Search

This book offers a new approach to dealing with Murakami's radical narrative project by demonstrating how his first and later trilogies utilize the structure of the simulacrum, a second-order representation, to develop a complex critique of contemporary Japanese culture. This critique is mirrored in the practices of current media-entertainment technologies which allow Murakami's works, and their critical/promotional meta-texts, to cohere under the rubric of the so-called 'Murakami Phenomenon.' Published 2006, Lexington Books, ISBN 0739107852

review

The first chapter of the novel is available on the New York Times web site

Brilliant page with reviews and links from The Complete Review

Salon Review by Laura Miller

Barcelonareview review

21st Century Lit review by Francisca Hu

The mystery in Room 208 by Julian Ferraro from The Times (UK)

Notes on Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Thomas Acton Bishop

On a Nightmarish Trek Through History's Web - New York Times review by MICHIKO KAKUTANI

East meets West - another New York Times review by JAMIE JAMES

On The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - fiction from a rising son a feature by David Mathew

Broken Mainspring - Like a stopped timepiece, Haruki Murakami's clockwork fiction tells the right time twice a day. By Lakshmi Gopalkrishnan - The Slate review

MetroActive Books review by Jim Rendon

Blogcritics magazine review by Daryl Sng

Review by Holger Nauheimer for the Change Management Blog

Interesting review by Jason Kottke

Critique magazine review by Maya Mirsky

Interesting note from the AIGA wwhich nominated the US Cover for a design award

Very Detailed Wikipedia page

Danny Reviews - review by Danny Yee

Blogging Bookworms review

From here to obscurity - review by Hayden Childs

Literary Encyclopedia - review by Matthew Chozick, Harvard University

Interesting points raised in a short review by Thomas Acton Bishop