The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

β€œIs 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?

When Noru Okada finds that his cat is missing he is not left one bit disturbed. On the other hand his wife is getting restless every single minute because of it. And those sexually explicit calls he gets from a woman when he is alone. And is his wife restless only because of the cat or something?

Writing style: Murakami uses a very strange mix of layering and mystical realism to narrate his tales. There is never one theme continuing in the book, all at once two or three stories run in parallel lines. They of course converge or have a common idea which the reader has to find or understand.

More or less the narrative contains many symbols or metaphors either in the form of dreams, meta-physical elements or even magic. They denote the state of mind of the characters their stories and also at times the connect they hold with each other

Reading: As a reader I believe it is very important to do some background reading on Murakami, mystical realism and surrealism. In this way your overall ease with his style of narration and understanding will be hugely enhanced. At times you will feel lost and may have to re-read pages but the end of it all the reading experience that you will gain will be very fulfiling.

Tip of the day! Read him during the day because most of us feel that the book takes over your mind at night. Very dark dingy narratives often intercepted by long gruesome details on war crimes.

Overall rating: 4.75/5 (It has been entered as one of my all time favourite novels)

Connecting it with Write Tribe. The day four sees us writing a Book review.

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