The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

by Haruki Murakami

Paperback, 607 pages

English language

Published Sept. 1, 1998 by Vintage International.

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

(16 reviews)

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 …

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

23 editions

Chad Nelson reviewed The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Re-read after 20 years and it hits way differnt

5 stars

Weird and brilliant, the book constantly tempts you into decoding it’s meaning, and then immediately pulls the rug out from under your mind-feet.

I also felt like I needed a giant white board to track the seemingly endless inter-connections, parallels, and metaphors, but I’m not sure a large enough white board exists, and even if it did I’d probably just end up with a giant mess of ideas rendered less beautiful than the novel itself. All that said, his writing about female sexuality is weird and deeply uncomfortable.

Utsob Roy reviewed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Review of 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Well... Not as good as Murakami's other works.

jeffbenner reviewed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Review of 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Much like [book: Kafka on the Shore], The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has a very promising beginning, and a dazzling middle, but ultimately fails to bring all of its parts together to form a satisfying whole.