21 May 2006
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Toru Okada is, for all intents and purposes, an ordinary man. Happily married with his own house and recently finished with a low-level job in a law firm, his uneventful life consists of comfortable routine. When the cat goes missing, his wife Kumiko begins to become quiet and unhappy and he begins to receive bizarre and suggestive phone calls from a strange woman who seems to know him very well. From this point on, Okada embarks on a strange journey of self-discovery and encounters a curious cast of characters who guide him to a destination of which he has no knowledge.
Set in a modern world of ‘post capitalistic mayhem’, Dance, Dance, Dance follows a humble magazine journalist as a visit to an old holiday destination brings back memeories of years previously. The Dolphin Hotel, formerly a run-down and unappealing establishment, is rebuilt and unrecogniseable. Despite this he is drawn back by recollections of the times he shared with a woman he has not seen in years. His stay at the new Dolphin Hotel leads to reunions with old friends and chance encounters with some colourful characters: add to this a mysterious murder and Murakami’s characteristic writing style and Dance, Dance, Dance is the result.
Norwegian Wood is a quirky and deeply moving love story, set against the backdrop of student protests, free love and uncertainty that made up Japanese university life in the 1960s. The young Toru Watanabe is a struggling student who is in love with childhood friend Naoko. While Naoko is dangerously affected by a tragedy that had struck years previously and takes refuge in a remote sanitorium, Toru meets the vivacious Midori and finds his loyalties divided.
A government worker, or ‘calcutec’, is sent on an assignment to a mysterious underground laboratory and finds himself involved in a bitter infowar between two organisations. What is his role in this and the ‘End of the World’? Meanwhile, in another reality, one man is trapped inside a strange walled town from which there is no escape: why did he have to give up his Shadow and read old dreams at the local library of this strange and wondrous place?
