Wind-up_Bird_Chronicle
1999 Shortlist

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is many things: the story of a marriage that mysteriously collapses; a jeremiad against the superficiality of contemporary politics; an investigation of painfully suppressed memories of war; a bildungsroman about a compassionate young man’s search for his own identity as well as that of his nation. Deceptively simple, wise, poignant, funny, and horrifying, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a mesmerising saga of personal conscience and the power of history. Haruki Murakami was born in Japan in 1949. He is the recipient of many honours including the prestigious Yomiuri Literary Prize and his work has been translated into fourteen languages.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Haruki
Murakami

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and HardBoiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and HardBoiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Jay
Rubin

Jay Rubin is an American translator, writer, scholar and Japanologist. He is one of the main translators of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami into English. He has also written a guide to Japanese, Making Sense of Japanese, and a biographical literary analysis of Murakami.

Jay Rubin is an American translator, writer, scholar and Japanologist. He is one of the main translators of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami into English. He has also written a guide to Japanese, Making Sense of Japanese, and a biographical literary analysis of Murakami.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
21/10/1997
Country
United States
Original Language
Japanese
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Translator
Jay Rubin

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