Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki MURAKAMI

Haruki Marakami’s book Wind-Up Bird chronicle is one of his best novels, it has some awards to its name. This hard-to-review masterpiece vaults into first rank international fiction novels.

Toru Okada leaves his job and stays home unemployed while his wife, Kumiko goes for work. He is more like an emotionless man but thinks too much. They somehow get divorced upon losing their cat in first place and subsequently, most of the things tend to remain mysterious to Toru. They named their cat Noburu Wataya derived from Kumiko’s borther name, Noboru Wataya. Toru meets lots of somewhat mysterious and crazy-like people like Malta and Creta Kano sisters, Mr. Honda, a World War II lieutenant and strange Akazakis. He develops friendship with May Kasahara, whom he met when he was looking out for cat, and their relation tell us how small things and thoughts matters.

The buried secrets of the World War II are described vividly and intensely, that some of it might be disturbing (one can skip this chapter though). Russian and Japan conflicts, Mongolian guy skinning a Major, faraway torturous prison in Siberia and the secret agents; all these take us to the secrets of World War II.

Toru goes to the bottom of the well for some reason or no reason for few days as described by lieutenant while sharing his war experiences with Mongolians and Russians. Most of the time, Toru tries to contact or find his wife or ex-wife but some unknown factors of her brother Noburu Wataya plays major role to keep away Kumiku from him. The whole thing is somehow related to each other like Toru to World War II, well tale with Toru and lieutenant, Wind-Up bird that cries and winds spring, which only Toru hears.

Story keeps us going and its unpredictable what comes next. Murakami has profoundly put his imagination into words, and we tend to delve into his beautiful yet mysterious world of imagination.

A Wind-Up Bird Tattoo (Source: google)