The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

paperback, 611 pages

Published Sept. 13, 1997 by KNOPF..

ISBN:
978-0-9653419-8-1
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4 stars (150 reviews)

Japan’s most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. ([source][1])

[1]: www.harukimurakami.com/book/the-wind-up-bird-chronicle

26 editions

Absolute Perfection

5 stars

I am vaguely new to listening to audiobooks and just reading in general so my thoughts are not backed by much experience but from the few books that I have listened to and read in the past, this is by fast the best.

The narrators voice is incredibly soothing and calm while pronouncing every word with impeccable accuracy this makes the experiencing much easier when compared to some other narrators whose voice you have to pay an extreme amount of attention to so that you can understand the words being read.

The story is amazing and creates such a beautiful and clear view in the listeners mind as to what the world surrounding our characters is like. It's the kind of descriptions that takes a location and turns it into a character.

This book is simply incredble. The story, the characters, the beautifully described locations from 'enveloping moonlight' to the …

Re-read after 20 years and it hits way differnt

5 stars

Weird and brilliant, the book constantly tempts you into decoding it’s meaning, and then immediately pulls the rug out from under your mind-feet.

I also felt like I needed a giant white board to track the seemingly endless inter-connections, parallels, and metaphors, but I’m not sure a large enough white board exists, and even if it did I’d probably just end up with a giant mess of ideas rendered less beautiful than the novel itself. All that said, his writing about female sexuality is weird and deeply uncomfortable.

Absolute Perfection.

5 stars

I am vaguely new to listening to audiobooks and just reading in general so my thoughts are not backed by much experience but from the few books that I have listened to and read in the past, this is by fast the best.

The narrators voice is incredibly soothing and calm while pronouncing every word with impeccable accuracy this makes the experiencing much easier when compared to some other narrators whose voice you have to pay an extreme amount of attention to so that you can understand the words being read.

The story is amazing and creates such a beautiful and clear view in the listeners mind as to what the world surrounding our characters is like. It's the kind of descriptions that takes a location and turns it into a character.

This book is simply incredible. The story, the characters, the beautifully described locations from 'enveloping moonlight' to the …

Review of 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

You know that old trick magicians do when they remove a tablecloth without breaking anything? Well something similar happens when you start a Murakami book, the book is the table, you are the items on the table and the tablecloth is reality. After a few pages reality gets pulled from under you and you find yourself in some crazy world that makes no sense but is mesmerising at the same time.

This story is in 3 parts. Parts 1 and 2 are brilliant, what you would expect from Murakami. Weird women, ears, random animal (Jelly fish), a cat, main character who is like an emotionless robot and gets phased by nothing, more weird women. These two parts are some of the best writing he has done. Part 3 though, he tries something new and I don't like something new! He includes letters, news stories and articles from a magazine, whilst …

Review of 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I rarely re-read books because there are so many, and so little time. I made an exception here because I read it it first in a delirious whirl of Murakami books. I was falling in love with a writer and was giddy with his peculiar mix of the banal and surreal.
For some reason I didn't see beyond the oeuvre to the exceptional nature of this work so I only gave 4 stars. I fixed that now with 5. I was so totally absorbed in each section that I didn't see how all the parts were played out as a whole.
I recently listened to Patti Smith's "M train" where she becomes enamoured with the book so I knew I had to go back and give it the time it deserved. I'm glad I did.

Review of 'Crónica del pájaro que da cuerda al mundo' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Confieso que soy extremadamente imparcial con Murakami, me gusta, me gusta mucho. Me engancha tanto su mundo que no quiero dejarlo, no me permito estar en otro 'estado', quiero vivir en ese mundo donde nada pasa pero todo parece cambiar inevitablemente. Quiero dejarme ir, olvidarme de la vida 'real' y vivir la 'absurda realidad' que nos ofrece. La alienación social de sus protagonistas alimenta esa peligrosa misantropía en la que todes nos vemos abocades y me encanta dejarme llevar por esa sensación.

En esta novela más que en cualquier otra de este autor veo que para mi Murakami es un 'Kafka aplicado'. Esa fina barrera que divide lo real de la fantástico pero con una diferencia: Murakami parece querer dar explicación a aquello que Kafka ofrece sin titubear: el 'absurdo'. Lo que me magnetiza del escritor japonés es esa esperanza de que todo va a tener sentido, ese jugar con …

Review of 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (The Complete Classics)' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

A wild ride. Mysteries piled upon mysteries, but without the luxury of having any of them explained to you at the end. Reportedly, the English translation was heavily abridged - the original was published in three volumes. On one hand, the full text might have made more sense. But on the other hand, I barely managed to finish the book as it is.

Toru, the protagonist, is a cipher. A passive, passionless man who drifts through life, doing nothing of his own volition. (In the real world, anyway. In an alternate reality somewhere in his own mind he manages to have an affair and to kill a man.) He has no stories of his own, but absorbs the stories of those that he meets. And boy, are they doozies. Spies getting flayed alive in WWII in Manchuria, surviving (or not) the Siberian gulag.

I listened to an audio version, where …

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