![]() ![]() But he quickly finds himself dragged into a dark tale with an impetus as far back as 1939, where events during Japan’s occupation of Manchuria during World War II still cast their haunting shadows over contemporary Japanese society. He’s unemployed and mostly just takes care of the house while his wife, Kumiko, works all day. At first Toru’s life is small and narrow. ![]() Murakami brilliantly widens the aperture of the narrative throughout the first book (of which there are three in total). In order to save his wife he becomes determined to find one. And for Toru, the bizarre events just won’t stop piling up and all without even the slightest hint of an explanation. He receives phone calls from a strange anonymous woman. A nearby vacant house seems to pulsate with menace. First his cat goes missing and then his wife follows suit. ![]() Instead it’s about a Tokyo-based man - an extraordinarily normal man with an average face, build, and temperament - named Toru Okada, whose contentedly boring life unravels into inexplicable mystery before his eyes. First published in 1994, then translated to English in 1997, Wind-Up Bird is a hardboiled detective story - plotted in the vein of a Raymond Chandler or a Dashiell Hammett - that involves no detectives and very little actual crime. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami is a sprawling, mist-cloaked swamp of a book. ![]()
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