Toru Okada lived a relatively simple life. Now, his cat has gone missing, he receives mysterious telephone calls, and his once loving wife grows more distant by the day. As he struggles to come to terms with what’s happening, Toru must navigate an increasingly surreal series of discoveries and encounters. Ostensibly a story about marriage, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle weaves its way between and among genres and themes, with Murakami’s trademark narrative style and complex characters. Designed in series with the best-selling Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood, this latest addition to our Murakami collection sees the return of conceptual artist Daniel Liévano. Having won a prestigious Society of Illustrators Silver Medal for his work on Kafka on the Shore, Liévano once again demonstrates his innate understanding of Murakami’s imaginary worlds; his dreamlike illustrations perfectly in tune with the author’s ethereal prose.

MURAKAMI’S MASTERPIECE
Murakami is known for creating enchanted worlds that exist in plain sight and filling them with characters that are endearing yet complex. He transforms apparently conventional domestic scenes into explosions of surreal events that turn his protagonists’ worlds upside down. A quiet man of simple pleasures, Toru embarks on a bizarre journey to disentangle the truth from the many stories he has been told in an attempt to make sense of his new, disordered life. From his wife Kumiko, who disappears shortly after the cat, to her sociopathic older brother Noboru and their nihilistic neighbor May, the characters in this postmodern fairytale drag Toru and the reader out of their comfort zones. With Daniel Liévano on hand to visualize the story, this is the must-have edition for Murakami fans.

PRODUCTION DETAILS
Bound in blocked cloth
Set in Arno with Futura as display
688 pages
Frontispiece plus 6 color illustrations, including 3 double-page spreads, each with a yellow motif on the reverse
Printed throughout in black and blue, including 44 illustrated motifs
Metallic printed endpapers
Blocked and die-cut slipcase
10" x 6 ¾"