The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

 

I first learned of Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami about three years ago when I read an interesting review of his novel, Kafka on the Shore. I've gone on since then to read four more of his novels, although two of those - 1Q84 and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - were originally published as trilogies, so I suppose you could say I've read nine in total.

In 1Q84 a particularly nasty character named Ushikawa plays a crucial role. After finishing that book, I learned that Ushikawa had appeared in the earlier The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle so I made it a point to read it as soon as I could fit it in.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, reading Murakami brings to my mind the works of Franz Kafka and Mikhail Bulgakov with perhaps a bit of Dostoevsky thrown in for good measure. In my review of Kafka on the Shore I described Murakami's writing as "surreal and hallucinatory". The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle certainly fits that bill. I might even add that this novel reads like a Salvador Dalí painting - dreamlike.

While reading this novel, I was reminded of a novel I read back in the days when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth - The Steppenwolf  by Hermann Hesse. I'm placing that one in the queue to be re-read very soon.