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Zusatztext “Dreamlike and compelling. . . . Murakami is a genius.” — Chicago Tribune “Mesmerizing. . . . Murakami’s most ambitious attempt yet to stuff all of modern Japan into a single fictional edifice.” — The Washington Post Book World “A significant advance in Murakami’s art . . . a bold and generous book.” — The New York Times Book Review “A stunning work of art . . . that bears no comparisons.” — New York Observer “With The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ! Murakami spreads his brilliant! fantastical wings and soars.” — Philadelphia Inquirer “Seductive. . . . A labyrinth designed by a master! at once familiar and irresistibly strange.” — San Francisco Chronicle “An epic . . . as sculpted and implacable as a bird by Brancusi.” — New York Magazine “Mesmerizing! original . . . fascinating! daring! mysterious and profoundly rewarding.” — Baltimore Sun “A beguiling sense of mystery suffuses The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and draws us irresistibly and ever deeper into the phantasmagoria of pain and memory. . . . Compelling [and] convincing.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review “Digs relentlessly into the buried secrets of Japan’s past . . . brilliantly translated into the latest vernacular.” —Pico Iyer! Time Informationen zum Autor Haruki Murakami Klappentext The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force-and one of Haruki Murakami's most acclaimed and beloved novels. In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat-and then for his wife as well-in a netherworld beneath the city's placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.Book One: The Thieving Magpie June and July 1984 1 Tuesday's Wind-Up Bird • Six Fingers and Four Breasts When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie , which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. I wanted to ignore the phone, not only because the spaghetti was nearly done, but because Claudio Abbado was bringing the London Symphony to its musical climax. Finally, though, I had to give in. It could have been somebody with news of a job opening. I lowered the flame, went to the living room, and picked up the receiver. "Ten minutes, please," said a woman on the other end. I'm good at recognizing people's voices, but this was not one I knew. "Excuse me? To whom did you wish to speak?" "To you , of course. Ten minutes, please. That's all we need to understand each other." Her voice was low and soft but otherwise nondescript. "Understand each other?" "Each other's feelings." I leaned over and peeked through the kitchen door. The spaghetti pot was steaming nicely, and Claudio Abbado was still conducting The Thieving Magpie . "Sorry, but you caught me in the middle of making spaghetti. Can I ask you to call back later?" "Spaghetti? What are you doing cooking spaghetti at ten-thirty in the morning?" "That's none of your business," I said. " I decide what I eat and when I eat it." "True enough. I'll call back," she said, her voice now flat and expressionless. A little change in mood can do amazing things to the tone of a person's voice. "Hold on a minute," I said before she could hang up. "If this is some new sales gimmick, you can forget it. I'm ou...
