![]() ![]() So I tried chunks of Wind-Up, and half a dozen others. What had I once loved so much? I wasn't sure. Last week I pulled out Norwegian Wood from the top shelf for the first time in years. And now people started to give me Murakami books as presents: the critical study (Murakami and The Music of Words), the short story collection (After Dark), the lesser novels (Sputnik Sweetheart) and so on. ![]() As Harvill published more and more titles, I would advise Murakami virgins to "start with" the slim novella, South Of The Border, West Of The Sun, before enjoying the classics and then graduating to the SF-infused "more difficult" earlier works (A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard Boiled Wonderland, Dance Dance Dance). I bought it for friends and family with the shrill instruction: "It'll change your life!" (Although I wasn't sure how). The following day, with my flight delayed at Kansai airport, I tore through another couple of hundred pages.īut it was the UK publication, in 2000, of Murakami's only realist novel, Norwegian Wood, and its themes of loneliness and alienation, that left me evangelical. That night, lying in the coffin-like confines of my hotel capsule, I enjoyed the taste of the surreal (mysterious phone calls, enigmatic women) that so perfectly seasoned the opening's suburban concerns (detailed preparation of food, marriage problems, missing pet). ![]()
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