The wind-up bird chronicle

by Haruki Murakami

607 pages

English language

Published July 10, 2003 by Vintage.

ISBN:: 978-0-09-944879-2

(18 reviews)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (ねじまき鳥クロニクル, Nejimakidori Kuronikuru) is a novel published in 1994–1995 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The American translation and its British adaptation, dubbed the "only official translations" (English), are by Jay Rubin and were first published in 1997. For this novel, Murakami received the Yomiuri Literary Award, which was awarded to him by one of his harshest former critics, Kenzaburō Ōe.

14 editions

willowmillway reviewed Wind-up Bird Chronicle, The by Haruki Murakami

your unemployed friend on a tuesday

4 stars

Content warning identity of antagonist

this book does incredible stuff dealing with "the supernatural" or metaphysical this thinly hidden aspect of fundamentally mundane reality. with such an ordinary mc and such an ordinary premise its impossible to know what to expect. in popular horror, the source of anxiety is the monster and in a way murakami follows this template, there is a monster in the brother in-law noboru wataya. however its more in the existential horror that anxiety resides for this story. the idea that we live in a world guided not by causality but by fate and the correlation between distant times, places and people. we live in a world that is irrational and uncontrolable and freedom lies in letting go, being consumed by the flow and the darkness. the horror then seeps in at all sides; happenstance, chance encounters and dreams make it such that the world and the self are the source of horror. it would be accurate to call it ontological horror rather than psychological. i appreciated the tools murakami utilizes for storytelling such as long monologues, letters, flashbacks, again dreams, and phone calls, each of which is able to conjure different voices than the mc's pov. overall, very excting story that rarely drags and offers a lot to think about.

Mannivu reviewed L'uccello che girava le viti del mondo by Haruki Murakami

Prolisso, onirico, ma interessante

4 stars

Il romanzo è decisamente prolisso, fonde tantissime storie diverse e qualcuna, forse, era evitabile. L'ultima parte assume un aspetto onirico piuttosto confuso, che salta senza grosse indicazioni tra realtà e sogno. Nel complesso è un libro interessante, ma non uno di quelli che vanno letti assolutamente una volta nella vita.

Taru Luojola reviewed Vieterilintukronikka by Haruki Murakami

Jälleen sama mut eri

4 stars

Murakamin kirjat ovat luotettavia lukukokemuksia: tarina on aina käytännössä sama ja tunnelma aina mukavasti nyrjähtänyt. Tällä kertaa salariman-elämää vieroksuvan kolmikymppisen miehen vaimo katoaa yhtäkkiä, ja katoamisen selvittäminen ei tietenkään ole mitenkään suoraviivainen tai looginen prosessi. Tapaus tuntuu myös jollain tavalla kietoutuvan Japanin sotaoperaatioihin Kiinan mantereella, ja sitä kautta teos laajeneekin japanilaisen machokulttuurin kommentaariksi.

Auntie Terror reviewed The wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Review of 'The wind-up bird chronicle' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

4.5 stars

Now that I have had time to breathe and sleep after finsihing this book, I feel that I have recovered enough from the mindfck (not meant negatively) it gave me. Still I wonder whether my review will read like anything more than weird blathering. I'm not making any promises.

The wonderful thing is that, on the surface, Murakami started this novel like a family drama where one person realises too late that they have taken their partner for granted and thus have lost them. But that wouldn't really be Murakami, would it?
Of course, there is a cat - or the disappearance of one which sets off the whole spiral of events which make Toru Okada, the main character, drift further and further away from what most people would call the real world. There, furthermore, are a bunch of psychically gifted persons of various shapes, a psychic prostitute, a teenager working for a wig company, a cursed soldier, a young man who can't speak since he saw his father bury a heart in their garden with a stranger, a power-hungry, sinister brother-in-law, a haunted house, and a bird who winds the spring of the world and also functions as an omen of undefined allegience. And they all are part of the same web that somehow has moved into a position to make it a tangent to Toru's reality and existence. This world doesn't necessarily hold itself to common ideas about space-time or the laws of cause and consequence. Its inhabitants are strange and powerful, and mostly not exactly well-meaning.
As any proper knight in shining armour would do, Toru, or Mr Wind-up Bird, sets out to save his wife from this fascinating and horrifying mess.

As I mentioned before, this novel did something to my brain, possibly put a few knots into its wiring which didn't need to be there. I actually felt as exhausted as Toru after clubbing whatever creature it precisely was in the hotel room that maybe never was and then returning to the well which just might have been filled by the tears of a distraught teenager miles and miles away. (Do you see what I mean when I say this novel twisted some wiring in my brain?)
Nonetheless, I highly recommend this book to anyone inclined towards Murakami's special kind of weirdness and surrealism and daring enough for a bit of (possibly reversible) mindfckery.