Okada is apparently a happy man - his domestic life seems familiar and comfortable, but admittedly he has just quit his job, the cat has disappeared and a strange woman is bothering him with explicit phone calls
His life was like his recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold, a runaway friend, a rightwing politico, an ovine-obsessed professor and a manic depressive in a sheep outfit, implicate them in a hunt for a sheep. that may or may not be running the world, and the upshot is another singular masterpiece from Japan's finest novelist.
An intimate look at writing, running, and the incredible way they intersect, from the incomparable, bestselling author Haruki Murakami. While simply training for the New York City Marathon would be enough for most people, Haruki Murakami decided to write about it as well. The result is a beautiful memoir about his intertwined obsessions with running and writing, full of vivid memories and insights, including the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer. By turns funny and sobering, playful and phulosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in athletic pursuit.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Including the story "Drive My Car”—now an Academy Award–nominated film—this collection from the internationally acclaimed author "examines what happens to characters without important women in their lives; it'll move you and confuse you and sometimes leave you with more questions than answers" (Barack Obama). Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are lovesick doctors, students, ex-boyfriends, actors, bartenders, and even Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, brought together to tell stories that speak to us all. In Men Without Women Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic, marked by the same wry humor and pathos that have defined his entire body of work.
STEP INTO THE CITY When a young man's girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own. When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of horned beasts and willow trees, he finds his beloved working in a different library - a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he's willing to lose. A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a parable for these strange times. PRAISE FOR HARUKI MURAKAMI 'The world's most popular cult novelist' Guardian 'Wild and thrilling. . . Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked' Sunday Times 'Totally gripping' Daily Express 'It's safe to say that there's no one like Murakami' Literary Review 'No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades' Financial Times
Rare book
A deeply personal, intimate conversation about music and writing between the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author and the former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In Absolutely on Music, internationally Haruki Murakami sits down with his friend Seiji Ozawa, the revered former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for a series of conversations on their shared passion: music. Over the course of two years, Murakami and Ozawa discuss everything from Brahms to Beethoven, from Leonard Bernstein to Glenn Gould, from Bartók to Mahler, and from pop-up orchestras to opera. They listen to and dissect recordings of some of their favorite performances, and Murakami questions Ozawa about his career conducting orchestras around the world. Culminating in Murakami’s ten-day visit to the banks of Lake Geneva to observe Ozawa’s retreat for young musicians, the book is interspersed with ruminations on record collecting, jazz clubs, orchestra halls, film scores, and much more. A deep reflection on the essential nature of both music and writing, Absolutely on Music is an unprecedented glimpse into the minds of two maestros.
In a fantastical illustrated short novel, three people imprisoned in a nightmarish library plot their escape.
When A Man'S Favourite Elephant Vanishes, The Balance Of His Whole Life Is Subtly Upset; A Couple'S Midnight Hunger Pangs Drive Them To Hold Up A Mcdonald'S; A Woman Finds She Is Irresistible To A Small Green Monster That Burrows Through Her Front Garden; An Insomniac Wife Wakes Up To A Twilight World Of Semi-Consciousness In Which Anything Seems Possible - Even Death. In Every One Of The Stories That Make Up The Elephant Vanishes, Murakami Makes A Determined Assault On The Normal. He Has A Deadpan Genius For Dislocating Realities To Uncover The Surreal In The Everyday, The Extraordinary In The Ordinary.
The eight stories in this new book are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball, to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator may or may not be Murakami himself. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides. Philosophical and mysterious, the stories in First Person Singular all touch beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory. . . all with a signature Murakami twist.
Asako è una studentessa di 17 anni silenziosa e assorta. Un giorno Asako decide di cambiare vita, si fa da parte, esce di scena: abbandona la scuola e si nasconde in casa senza che la madre se ne accorga. Liberata la sua stanza da tutti gli oggetti, gettati i vestiti, i giochi, il computer, Asako si accinge a sparire, quando incontra un bambino di dieci anni che cambierà la sua esistenza. Grazie a quel computer prima abbandonato, poi recuperato, i due si immergono nel mondo impersonale delle chat-line, e avviano una rete di incontri erotici che è al tempo stesso un vero e proprio lavoro e un teatro delle ombre, in cui annullare la propria identità e scoprirsi diversi.
