Synopses & Reviews
This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event.
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.
Review:
"Norwegian Wood...not only points to but manifests the author's genius." Chicago Tribune
Review:
"Murakami tells a subtle, charming, profound and very sexy story of young love bound for tragedy." Publishers Weekly
Review:
"[O]ne of Murakami's most appealing — if uncharacteristic — books....[A]nother solid building-block in one of contemporary fiction's most energetic and impressive bodies of work." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Haruki Murakami is our greatest living practitioner of fiction....The novels aren't afraid to pull tricks usually banned from serious fiction: they are suspenseful, corny, spooky, and hilarious; they're airplane reading, but when you're through you spend the rest of the flight, the rest of the month, rethinking life." Daniel Handler, The Village Voice
Review:
"Deeply moving, darkly comic, beautifully written, and smoothly translated, this is for all literary fiction collections." Library Journal
Review:
"Vintage Murakami [and] easily the most erotic of [his] novels." Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review:
"[A] treat...Murakami captures the heartbeat of his generation and draws the reader in so completely you mourn when the story is done." The Baltimore Sun
Review:
"A world class writer who has both eyes open and takes big risks." Washington Post Book World
Review:
"[Murakami belongs] in the topmost rank of writers of international stature." Newsday
Synopsis:
Toru Watanabe is looking back on the love and passions of his life and trying to make sense of it all. As his first love Naoko sinks deeper into mental despair, he is inexorably pushed to find a new meaning and a new love in order to survive.
About the Author
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into thirty-four languages, and the most recent of his many honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Kobo Abe.
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