Norwegian Wood
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- 8,99 €
Publisher Description
The haunting, enigmatic love story that turned Murakami into a literary superstar in Japan, and is his bestselling title throughout the world
Autumn 1969, and soon I would be 20.
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire – to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.
‘Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami’s writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility’ Guardian
'Poignant, romantic and hopeless, it beautifully encapsulates the heartbreak and loss of faith' Sunday Times
'A masterly novel' New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a complete stylistic departure from his mysterious and surreal novels (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; A Wild Sheep Chase) that show the influences of Salinger, Fitzgerald and Tom Robbins, Murakami tells a bittersweet coming-of-age story, reminiscent of J.R. Salamanca's classic 1964 novel, Lilith--the tale of a young man's involvement with a schizophrenic girl. A successful, 37-year-old businessman, Toru Watanabe, hears a version of the Beatles' Norwegian Wood, and the music transports him back 18 years to his college days. His best friend, Kizuki, inexplicably commits suicide, after which Toru becomes first enamored, then involved with Kizuki's girlfriend, Naoko. But Naoko is a very troubled young woman; her brilliant older sister has also committed suicide, and though sweet and desperate for happiness, she often becomes untethered. She eventually enters a convalescent home for disturbed people, and when Toru visits her, he meets her roommate, an older musician named Reiko, who's had a long history of mental instability. The three become fast friends. Toru makes a commitment to Naoko, but back at college he encounters Midori, a vibrant, outgoing young woman. As he falls in love with her, Toru realizes he cannot continue his relationship with Naoko, whose sanity is fast deteriorating. Though the solution to his problem comes too easily, Murakami tells a subtle, charming, profound and very sexy story of young love bound for tragedy. Published in Japan in 1987, this novel proved a wild success there, selling four million copies.
Customer Reviews
Reads like a song
This is one of the most inspiring books that I've read. It's far beyond a love story , a poetic image of deep human feelings brought into life by one the greatest writers of our time.
Simple but at the same time mysterious revives your memory to those special moments you lived and gives you a feeling that you listened to that Beatles song when you finished the 288 pages of this book. So simple and beatiful.