Killing Commendatore
ABOUT
THE BOOK
When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he secludes himself in the mountain home of a world-famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. One day, the young painter hears a noise from the attic, and upon investigation, he discovers a previously unseen painting. By unearthing this hidden work of art, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances; and to close it, he must undertake a perilous journey into a netherworld that only Haruki Murakami could conjure.
A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Ted
Goossen
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Philip
Gabriel
Philip Gabriel is Emeritus Professor of Japanese literature in the Department of East Asian Studies, the University of Arizona. He is the author of Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature and Spirit Matters: The Transcendent in Modern Japanese Literature and has translated many novels and short stories by the writer Haruki Murakami and other modern writers. He is recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2001) for his translation of Senji Kuroi’s Life in the Cul-de-Sac, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.
Philip Gabriel is Emeritus Professor of Japanese literature in the Department of East Asian Studies, the University of Arizona. He is the author of Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature and Spirit Matters: The Transcendent in Modern Japanese Literature and has translated many novels and short stories by the writer Haruki Murakami and other modern writers. He is recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2001) for his translation of Senji Kuroi’s Life in the Cul-de-Sac, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
An epic tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art and a stunning work of imagination. Eccentric and intriguing, Murakami builds a self-contained world that has a hidden universe beyond it. Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli “Vittorio Emanuele III, Italy
Killing Commendatore deals with a universal theme, the search for our place in the world and the formation of our self. Japanese perspective and sensibility give the work a special character. Biblioteca de Andalucía, Spain