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ねじまき鳥クロニクル
Nejimaki-dori Kuronikuru or The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a book by contemporary Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. I discovered the guy only last week in London when I accidentally bought his book. Then I told Airo, a Japanese friend (who btw is my age), how excited I was with the writer and the book, and he went: “Oh, wind-up bird cronicle reminds me of the college time!”. Erm, better a bit late than never;)
Anyway, the book *consumed* me in one go. Once I had started reading, I was not being able to stop. And even when I finished, I just went to the first page again and re-started. Then I realised that it was time to let the book go;)
I am not writing a plot summery here, as I believe no such thing can be written at all. I will just list a few simple passages from the story that have left me moved, impressed, shocked, disturbed, seduced, disgusted, at ease or all that together:
- the passage about the “men with thinning problem” and the nature of hairpieces;
- the one about the nature of pain - plain, ordinary and direct physical pain;
- the passage on skinning a man alive in the episode out of the Japanese historical event from the World War II;
- the one on namelessness of money;
- the passage on finding the answers to fundamental questions in the depths and darkness of a waterless well;
- the one about the prostitute of mind and the power of shared dreaming, latent eroticism and phantasmagorical seduction;
- the stories of consultants of the elements of the body - Malta Kano and Creta Kano;
- and I could actually go on, ending up listing nearly every passage in the book;)
This minimalist-surrealistic account of an unemployed man, searching for a lost cat, fading marriage and mystical self-examination gives the reader a sneak preview of the simplicity and complexity of modern Japan.
HM wrote more than a dozen of books so plenty of excellent reading out there …
By Nana | January 28, 2007 | Topics: Books |
January 28th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
He’s one of my favourite writers since my college years too (I discovered him in the early nineties) and one of the very few contemporary writers I actually “adore”, and mention “often” in my site.
More importantly, is Airo-san living in Slovenia ? Tell me tell me.
^^
January 28th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
How does one accidentally buy a book?
January 28th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
By the way you scared the heck out of me, because since I took up my Japanese books again I’m being a little obsessive about it, and when I saw the hiragana and kanji (and katakana, you got them all) in your rss feed I thought I was seeing things. “Bojana writing in Japanese too, I’m seeing things… Must take a break…”
January 29th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
No, Heck, Airo is currently in Belgium but going back to Japan very soon.
Got to read ur mentionings!
January 29th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
2003, and again. About many Japanese things and people, 2005.
March 23rd, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Nana, we must have been reading/listening to the Windup Bird at the same time, I was totally hooked up on it when around the time when you were here in London. You know that I have no patience with books and reading more than 10 pages at a time oversteps my pain-level ;-). But I have discovered literature last October when I bought an IPod. I listened to two Murakami Books so far: this one and another called “South of the Border, West of the Sun.” I think I like the latter one more: its a very straight and simple story which matches his minimalist style better, and it is not so overladen with surreal associations like the Wind up Bird. I loved the Wind up Bird, but I thought that in the end he looses his own story a bit… the story promises a better solution, I find: in the beginning he manages to bring some order into the worlds of his associations and story-lines, but then it is getting so complicated that I believe not even Haruki himself found his way out anymore… But you are right, it is a great and consuming book
cheers cheers