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Norwegian Wood is a simple coming-of-age tale, primarily set in 1969-70, when the author was attending university. The political upheavals and student strikes of the period form the novel's backdrop. But the focus here is the young Watanabe's love affairs, and the pain and pleasure and attendant losses of growing up. The collapse of a romance (and this is one among many!) leaves him in a metaphysical shambles:
I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with the same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it.This account of a young man's sentimental education sometimes reads like a cross between Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Stephen Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women. It is less complex and perhaps ultimately less satisfying than Murakami's other, more allegorical work. Still, Norwegian Wood captures the huge expectation of youth--and of this particular time in history--for the future and for the place of love in it. It is also a work saturated with sadness, an emotion that can sometimes cripple a novel but which here merely underscores its youthful poignancy. --Mark Thwaite
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Book Description Condition: New. pp. 390. Seller Inventory # 26356841926
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 390. Seller Inventory # 355681817
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclai med Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is n ow available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a l iterary event. Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college stud ent in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woma n, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best fri end years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness an d isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilit ies of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru fi nds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. Seller Inventory # RWARE0000056275
Book Description Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.'Evocative, entertaining, sexy and funny; but them Murakami is one of the best writers around' Time Out'Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility' Guardian 389 pp. Englisch. Seller Inventory # 9780099584353
Book Description Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.'Evocative, entertaining, sexy and funny; but them Murakami is one of the best writers around' Time Out'Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility' Guardian 389 pp. Englisch. Seller Inventory # 9780099584353
Book Description Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.'Evocative, entertaining, sexy and funny; but them Murakami is one of the best writers around' Time Out'Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility' Guardian 389 pp. Englisch. Seller Inventory # 9780099584353
Book Description Condition: New. Über den AutorrnrnIn 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new wri. Seller Inventory # 194596904