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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

By: Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin - translator
Narrated by: Rupert Degas
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Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.

© Haruki Murakami 1994 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

 Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Magical Realism World Literature Fantasy Magic Mind-bending
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Critic reviews

Murakami writes of contemporary Japan, urban alienation and journeys of self-discovery, and in this book he combines recollections of the war with metaphysics, dreams and hallucinations into a powerful and impressionistic work
Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down
Murakami weaves these textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty
Critics have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon - a roster so ill assorted as to suggest Murakami is in fact an original
Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original
How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration
[A] mesmeric story
Visionary...a bold and generous book
All stars
Most relevant
Unfortunately the narrator’s attempts to read in a woman’s voice and other strange voices are very odd and irritating! But I loved the story!

Great story! Irritating narration

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If you can read the book just read it yourself. You won’t be able to concentrate by the noises of this audiobook.

The voices of different characters put me off

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Other reviewers have complained about the female voices adopted by the reader, and at the outset I agreed - especially in respect of the voice given to May Kasahara. I continued to listen even so, and as the reading proceeded I came to think that Rupert Degas had done a superb job of characterising each and every character that features in this marvellous, moving, often surreal, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, utterly engaging novel. I should say that Degas gave careful consideration to each of the voices so that, for example, irritating as May Kasahara's voice may be, it's entirely suitable to this fabulously wayward teenage girl. Ditto for the lazy drawl allotted to Nutmeg Akasaka, the rich, middle-aged, superbly dressed woman who helps Toru Okada acquire the hanging house.
I first read the book a good 20 years ago, soon after the English translation appeared. I had read several Murakami novels by that time, and I thought that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was definitely the best. Indeed it remains unsurpassed by any of his later novels, fascinating though they are. There's no doubt that this is a great addition to the Audible library.

brilliant novel - superb reading by Robert Degas

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superb. never read or listened to such a strange book.
will stay with me for a long long time to come

strange dreamscape

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I don't think this book is quite as good as many others do, I prefer most of Murakami's other work, but enjoyed it.
I also didn't find the narrator half as bad as some reviewers did, in fact I liked him. I wouldn't let it put one off listening to it.

Good

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