Sputnik Sweetheart
ABOUT
THE BOOK
The narrator is a teacher whose only close friend is Sumire, an aspiring young novelist. Sumire is suddenly smitten with a sophisticated businesswoman and accompanies her to Europe, and ultimately to an island off the coast of Greece, where she disappears without a trace, leaving only lineaments of her fate: computer accounts of bizarre events and stories within stories. The teacher, summoned to assist in the search for her, experiences his own ominous, haunting visions, which lead him nowhere but home to Japan – and there, under the expanse of deep space and the still-orbiting Sputnik, he finally achieves a true understanding of his beloved.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Philip
Gabriel
Philip Gabriel is an American translator and Japanologist. He is a full professor and former department chair of the University of Arizona’s Department of East Asian Studies and is one of the major translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.
Philip Gabriel is an American translator and Japanologist. He is a full professor and former department chair of the University of Arizona’s Department of East Asian Studies and is one of the major translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.