The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Murakami, Haruki	4-week checkout	Due 05-01-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Murakami, Haruki	4-week checkout	Due 05-12-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Murakami, Haruki	4-week checkout	Due 05-21-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Murakami, Haruki	4-week checkout	Due 05-15-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Murakami, Haruki	4-week checkout	Due 05-31-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Murakami, Haruki	4-week checkout	Due 05-19-2024

"This translation originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1997"--Title page verso.
Having quit his job, Toru Okada is enjoying a pleasant stint as a "house husband", listening to music and arranging the dry cleaning and doing the cooking - until his cat goes missing, his wife becomes distant and begins acting strangely, and he starts meeting enigmatic people with fantastic life stories. They involve him in a world of psychics, shared dreams, out-of-body experiences, and shaman-like powers, and tell him stories from Japan's war in Manchuria, about espionage on the border with Mongolia, the battle of Nomonhan, the killing of the animals in Hsin-ching's zoo, and the fate of Japanese prisoners-of-war in the Soviet camps in Siberia.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Summary / Annotation
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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Surreal and very Japanese submitted by marielle on June 23, 2011, 11:15pm At his wife's behest, an unemployed man goes looking for his missing cat in the alley behind his house. Then things get weird.

This book is critically acclaimed and one of the more popular books to come out of Japan in recent years. I enjoyed it, but my mom was ambivalent about it. Not for your casual reader, but definitely worth reading if you enjoy Japanese literature, surrealism, or want something a bit more hefty than your typical beach reading. If you like this I'd recommend <i><a href="http://www.aadl.org/catalog/record/1236632">Kafka on the Shore</a></i>.

Trigger warning for sexual violence and wartime torture.

Stunning and Cohesive submitted by rwright on August 3, 2012, 1:45pm Murakami manages to marry dreamlike plots with action-packed, adventurous writing full of cultural references and wit. This was one of the best novels I've ever read, hands down. Highly recommended.

Dream Logic submitted by Fevvers - STAR473 on July 1, 2016, 7:05pm This can be a challenging and very rewarding book. A man's search for his missing wife leads him to very strange places. It's a mystery, it has elements of fantasy and magical realism, and it's very surreal. There are brutal descriptions of wartime violence; there are definitely nightmares as part of this dream-like story. It does all hang together to be absorbing and impactful, though it can be difficult to articulate why.

Magical submitted by emilysuzanne on July 30, 2019, 9:30am I can’t wait to read this book again.

Great bird submitted by smr on July 1, 2020, 4:25pm Great bird

A wonderful book submitted by courtneyhooper on August 12, 2022, 11:46pm Maybe his best

Disappointing submitted by ravenm on May 4, 2023, 7:43am I wish I could have related more to the main characters. The writing was disconnected and delusional. If that was Murakami's dreamscape, then it's time he wake up.

Aura by Carlos Fuentes is a great example of Magical Realism.