Tags:fiction
A Wild Sheep Chase
A New York Times bestselling author—and “a mythmaker for the millennium, a wiseacre wiseman” (New York Times Book Review)—delivers a surreal and elaborate quest that takes readers from Tokyo to the remote mountains of northern Japan, where the unnamed protagonist has a surprising confrontation with his demons. An advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend and casually appropriates the image for an advertisement. What he doesn’t realize is that included in the scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences.
Dance Dance Dance
Dance Dance Dance—a follow-up to A Wild Sheep Chase—is a tense, poignant, and often hilarious ride through Murakami’s Japan, a place where everything that is not up for sale is up for grabs.As Murakami’s nameless protagonist searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, he is plunged into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread. In this propulsive novel, featuring a shabby but oracular Sheep Man, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work today fuses together science fiction, the hardboiled thriller, and white-hot satire.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World takes a tour through two parallel narratives, exploring consciousness, the subconscious and identity.A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim.This book is science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel.Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.*ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*
1Q84: Book 3
Book Two of 1Q84 ended with Aomame standing on the Metropolitan Expressway with a gun between her lips. She knows she is being hunted, and that she has put herself in terrible danger in order to save the man she loves. But things are moving forward, and Aomame does not yet know that she and Tengo are more closely bound than ever.Tengo is searching for Aomame, and he must find her before this world's rules loosen up too much. He must find her before someone else does.
After the Quake
*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*Tales of upheaval and confusion, longing and love in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake.For the characters in after the quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away.Fourteen-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Earthquake Man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive burrowing worm. 'When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes,' says Frog. 'And right now he is very, very angry.'In a dance with the delights of Murakami's imagination we experience the limitless possibilities of fiction. With these stories Murakami expands our hearts and minds yet again' The Times
Wind/ Pinball
Discover Haruki Murakami's first two novels.'If you're the sort of guy who raids the refrigerators of silent kitchens at three o'clock in the morning, you can only write accordingly.That's who I am.'Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami's earliest novels. They follow the fortunes of the narrator and his friend, known only by his nickname, the Rat. In Hear the Wind Sing the narrator is home from college on his summer break. He spends his time drinking beer and smoking in J's Bar with the Rat, listening to the radio, thinking about writing and the women he has slept with, and pursuing a relationship with a girl with nine fingers.Three years later, in Pinball, 1973, he has moved to Tokyo to work as a translator and live with indistinguishable twin girls, but the Rat has remained behind, despite his efforts to leave both the town and his girlfriend. The narrator finds himself haunted by memories of his own doomed relationship but also, more bizarrely, by his short-lived obsession with playing pinball in J's Bar. This sends him on a quest to find the exact model of pinball machine he had enjoyed playing years earlier: the three-flipper Spaceship.*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*
Kafka on the Shore
Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy.The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down.As their parallel odysseys unravel, cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghost-like pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since World War II. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle - one of many which combine to create an elegant and dreamlike masterpiece.*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*'Hypnotic, spellbinding' The Times'Cool, fluent and addictive' Daily Telegraph‘Addictive... Exhilarating... A pleasure’ Evening Standard
Sputnik Sweetheart
*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*A mystery story about love, the cosmos and other fictional universes.Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. Miu is glamorous and successful. Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished...'Confirms Murakami as a master of his craft... Out of this world' Time Out
Super-Frog Saves Tokyo
‘What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real’ A lavishly illustrated edition of Murakami’s classic short story.Katagiri found a giant frog waiting for him in his apartment. It was powerfully built, standing over six feet tall on its hind legs. A skinny little man no more than five foot three, Katagiri was overwhelmed by the frog's imposing bulk.‘Call me “Frog,”’ said the frog in a clear, strong voice.Katagiri stood rooted in the doorway, unable to speak.‘Don't be afraid. I'm not here to hurt you. Just come and close the door. Please.’Briefcase in his right hand, grocery bag with fresh vegetables and canned salmon cradled in his left arm, Katagiri didn't dare move.‘Please, Mr. Katagiri, hurry and close the door, and take off your shoes.’Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, this special edition of Murakami’s celebrated short story sees the bewildered Katagiri find meaning in his humdrum life through joining forces with Frog in an effort to save Tokyo from an existential threat.‘No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades’ Financial Times‘A master storyteller’ Sunday Times
Killing Commendatore
*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*We all live our lives carrying secrets we cannot disclose.'Beguiling... Murakami is brilliant at folding the humdrum alongside the supernatural; finding the magic that's nested in life's quotidian details' GuardianWhen a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he holes up in the mountain home of a famous artist. The days drift by, spent painting, listening to music and drinking whiskey in the evenings. But then he discovers a strange painting in the attic and unintentionally begins a strange journey of self-discovery that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt and a haunted underworld.A stunning work of imagination, Killing Commendatore is a surreal tale of love and loneliness, war and art.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*A mesmerising mystery story about friendship from the internationally bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and 1Q84Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine’, and Oumi, ‘blue sea’, while the girls’ names were Shirane, ‘white root’, and Kurono, ‘black field’. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it.One day Tsukuru Tazaki’s friends announced that they didn't want to see him, or talk to him, ever again.Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then he meets Sara, who tells him that the time has come to find out what happened all those years ago.
Desire
You’ve just passed someone on the street who could be the love of your life, the person you’re destined for – what do you do? In Murakami’s world, you tell them a story. The five weird and wonderful tales collected here each unlock the many-tongued language of desire, whether it takes the form of hunger, lust, sudden infatuation or the secret longings of the heart.Selected from Haruki’s Murakami’s short story collections The Elephant Vanishes, Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, Men Without WomenVINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series: Love by Jeanette WintersonPsychedelics by Aldous HuxleyEating by Nigella LawsonSummer by Laurie Lee