The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Paperback, 607 pages

English language

Published Sept. 1, 1998 by Vintage International.

ISBN:
978-0-679-77543-0
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OCLC Number:
39915729

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5 stars (1 review)

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces …

23 editions

Absolute Perfection

5 stars

I am vaguely new to listening to audiobooks and just reading in general so my thoughts are not backed by much experience but from the few books that I have listened to and read in the past, this is by fast the best.

The narrators voice is incredibly soothing and calm while pronouncing every word with impeccable accuracy this makes the experiencing much easier when compared to some other narrators whose voice you have to pay an extreme amount of attention to so that you can understand the words being read.

The story is amazing and creates such a beautiful and clear view in the listeners mind as to what the world surrounding our characters is like. It's the kind of descriptions that takes a location and turns it into a character.

This book is simply incredble. The story, the characters, the beautifully described locations from 'enveloping moonlight' to the …

Subjects

  • Man-woman relationships -- Japan -- Fiction
  • Japan -- Fiction
  • Japan -- Politics and government -- Fiction