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Zusatztext “Grabs you from its opening lines. . . . [Murakami’s] never written anything more openly emotional.” – Los Angeles Magazine “Murakami is a genius.” – Chicago Tribune “Murakami has an unmatched gift for turning psychological metaphors into uncanny narratives.” – The New York Times Book Review “An agonizing! sweet story about the power and the pain of love. . . . Immensely deepened by perfect little images that leave much to be filled in by the reader’s heart or eye.” – The Baltimore Sun “[Murakami belongs] in the topmost rank of writers of international stature.” – Newsday “Murakami’s true achievement lies in the humor and vision he brings to even the most despairing moments.” – The New Yorker “Perhaps better than any contemporary writer! [Murakami] captures and lays bare the raw human emotion of longing.” – BookPage “Murakami . . . has a deep interest in the alienation of self! which lifts [ Sputnik Sweetheart ] into both fantasy and philosophy.” – San Francisco Chronicle “Not just a great Japanese writer but a great writer! period.” – Los Angeles Times Book Review Informationen zum Autor Born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949, Haruki Murakami grew up in Kobe and now lives near Tokyo. The most recent of his many honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Kobo Abe. His work has been translated into moer than fifty languages. Klappentext Part romance, part detective story, Sputnik Sweetheart tells the story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited love. K is madly in love with his best friend, Sumire, but her devotion to a writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments. At least, that is, until she meets an older woman to whom she finds herself irresistibly drawn. When Sumire disappears from an island off the coast of Greece, K is solicited to join the search party-and finds himself drawn back into her world and beset by ominous visions. Subtle and haunting, Sputnik Sweetheart is a profound meditation on human longing. Leseprobe Chapter 1 In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains-flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado's intensity doesn't abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and all, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be seventeen years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all wound up. Almost. At the time, Sumire-Violet in Japanese-was struggling to become a writer. No matter how many choices life might bring her way, it was novelist or nothing. Her resolve was a regular Rock of Gibraltar. Nothing could come between her and her faith in literature. After she graduated from a public high school in Kanagawa Prefecture, she entered the liberal arts department of a cozy little private college in Tokyo. She found the college totally out of touch, a lukewarm, dispirited place, and she loathed it-and found her fellow students (which would include me, I'm afraid) hopelessly dull, second-rate specimens. Unsurprisingly, then, just before her junior year, she just up and quit. Staying there any longer, she concluded, was a waste of time. I think it was the right move, but if I can be allowed a mediocre generalization, don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imper...
