| |
Hear the Wind Sing, by Haruki Murakami.
Haruki Murakami's first book Hear
the Wind Sing, published in 1979 (Alfred Birnbaum's
English translation in 1987) exhibits many of his later
trademarks, though on a much smaller scale: clocking in
at 130 pages and fitting nicely in a coat pocket.The author's
time spent in America comes across not only in direct references
to American culture (mostly music) but in a peculiar universal
placelessness during the story, broken only by the rare
mention of Tokyo or a place in and around the city. This
novel (or novella) sets up the Murakami's atypical narrative
techniques (jumping around in time, mainly) that would pervade
later books to a greater extent. The most startling revelation
- for somebody who's read later Murakami books before his
first - is the immediate presence of wells. In The
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a backyard well plays a
prominent role in the main character's story; here a brief
description of a sci-fi book by a fictional author called
The Wells of Mars for no clear reason than perhaps
to entice the reader to expect the unexpected, something
Murakami has accomplished ever since.
 |
