Tazaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage is currently flying off the shelves in his home country Japan. Here’s a quick guide to the author’s best works to spice up your Murakami Quotient.
Norwegian Wood
Released in 1987 in Japan, Norwegian Wood is a moving story of the narrator Toru Watanabe that reminisces sexuality and student years with two distinct women–Naoko and Midori. The novel is set in Tokyo in the late 60s and depicts the self serving and defeating nature of student revolution in the novel through which the three main characters weave the plot. The book was a huge hit with the students of the time and propelled Murakami to international stardom.Best Quote: “What do we talk about? Just ordinary things. What happened today, or books we've read, or tomorrow's weather, you know. Don't tell me you're wondering if people jump to their feet and shout stuff like 'It'll rain tomorrow if a polar bear eats the stars tonight'!”
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
This is the only non-fiction book in this list and also the most slimmest book of the lot. However, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is one of the most inspiring books of all time. Filled with insightful quotes and telling Murakami’s own story from the time in 1982, when having sold his jazz bar to start writing full time, he also took up running. Murakami has since run many marathons across the world and given us this book that is in equal parts funny, insightful as well as philosophical.
Best Quote: “The thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky.”
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
What do you call a book that talks about a disintegrating marriage but is a detective story that seeks to reveal secrets of the second World War? Answer: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami’s first successful stab at international success. The book gave readers worldwide a true sampling of Murakami’s magic realism, a piece of literary art that was reserved for the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie earlier. From a seemingly normal opening, the book drags readers into a strange vortex where truth, reality, fiction and dreams begin to merge. If you go with the author’s flow, you will be mesmerized with the story and Murakami’s writing.
Best Quote: “Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
Kafka On The Shore
If The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle introduced readers to Murakami’s strange yet bewitching novels, then Kafka On The Shore confirmed that a great new novelist had arrived on the world stage for good. Kafka On The Shore is even more twisted and metaphysical than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Telling the story of two people – Kafka Tamura who is looking for his mother and sister and an aging man Nakata who has lived through the horrors of the atomic bomb attacks, this book features talking cats, fishes who fall out of the sky during rain showers and a satisfying end to it all.
Best Quote: “Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
1Q84
1Q84 is Murakami’s last book before Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage. The book is the author’s ode to George Orwell’s 1984 and is a tour de force in the literal sense. This book, set in Tokyo in the year 1984, will have you turning all of its 950-odd pages to discover the story of Aomame and Tengo. It would be cheating to tell you much about this book but once you start you let Aomame take hold of you, this book will become really hard to put down. Take our word for it.
Best Quote: “Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone's soul being blown to the far side of the world.”
Go on now, indulge in these masterpieces until the English version of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage releases in India. Thank us later.
