A Wild Sheep Chase

I first decided to read this book in the original Japanese. In order to do so, I got the English translation, to compare and check my understanding (my Japanese is not so good yet). Very quickly I discovered that the English translation, while obviously telling the same story, is rather a loose interpretation stylistically (there are articles out there explaining these deliberate choices that Murakami himself agreed to). So then I got the French version. The French version is closer to the original text; I was reading the three in tandem, and at around the halfway point, there was a sentence which the English translator translated as : "She changed into a red dress and went home" (he's talking about a woman he was looking at through the window) and the French translator translated as "My girlfriend came back, having changed into a red dress". This piqued my interest, and I decided to read other translations to see how others translated the original somewhat ambiguous phrase (she and girlfriend are the same word in Japanese). I have read the novel 4 times now, (Japanese, English, French, Russian (he agrees with the French guy)) and am currently reading the Spanish translation (of which there are actually two). I plan on reading the Polish and Catalan one as well.

Anyway, the book itself is a detective story with magical realism elements. I think you could call it a Haruki Murakami novel for people who don't like Haruki Murakami novels (it's quite brief, and doesn't really have much in the way of weird sexual stuff the later novels do). What I like about it is the sort of melancholy atmosphere and the parts that talk about Japan's history.

Since it deals with a former war criminal who is now a very wealthy fixture of the extreme right and who controls the media and the publicity/advertisment industry it's quite contemporary. Maybe I just haven't encountered it but I see few people talk about the political aspect of Murakami's work.

I personally recommend this novel, to fans and non-fans of Murakami.

Wild Sheep Chase is for me, the perfect version of Murakami's work. The real magic of his work is his ability to easy you into a surreal narrative just slowly enough that you're always engaged but never surprised. Wild Sheep Chase nails that effect so so well. It's honestly one of my favorite books of all time.

No joke this is the one novel I'd suggest to people if they wanted to start with Murakami. I would actually specifically recommend reading this prior to Hear the Wind Sing or Pinball 1973 (the first two parts of the Trilogy of the Rat). I know it sounds a little weird but I think this book is better if you don't have that context the first time through. Then you can have the very gratifying experience of going back to the first two novels and getting all that sweet sweet lore. For me at least that order makes the story so much more complex and satisfying.

A man has to find a sheep, because a shady secretary is ready to bring down his world if he doesn't. This is no ordinary sheep, either. No, this sheep is something else. For those it has met, in "spiritual communion," their world is forever changed.

This is the third book I've read by Murakami, and it certainly fits a certain formula that is familiar to his other works (I've read "1Q84" and "Kafka On The Shore"). It was a good read. It was a bit slow to start, but Murakami's way of storytelling seems to work as a slow burn with firecrackers starting to go off along the way.

Definitely can see his craft building up into what would be his style in later works.

[Extra notes]

I haven't read the other books in The Rat series, and didn't know it was part of a series initially, but this book can be a standalone read.

I've seen some reviews out there that didn't understand how this is part of The Rat series, and that they found no mention of The Rat. Ignore any of these reviews, because they clearly haven't read the book! A character, referenced as The Rat, actually plays a repeating role much throughout the book. In fact, if you remove them from the book, it wouldn't even work. So, I'm not sure where this confusion is coming from -- unless they stopped reading very early in the book.

UPDATE: I have read "Dance, Dance, Dance" -- which is a good follow-up book that continues the story, with the same main character/narrator.