Haruki Murakami

Going Further: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Going Further: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I always enjoy reading foreign literature – I’m interested in reading about foreign places with a foreign way of looking at things. One consideration for translated literature is the question of what happens to the original quality or authorial intention when the words are translated. In many cases, there aren’t equivalent words for feelings or descriptions. When it comes to Haruki Murakami, the stakes are even higher. Murakami relies on an enormous amount of sensational descriptions. And the meaning of…

Book Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Book Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle blew my mind. Murakami has a wonderful way of taking regular people in mundane lives and bringing them to live with surreal events. He took such a simple concept and turned it into an intricate web: we cannot escape our past, and we cannot get the most out of our present or future until we are willing to confront our past. He showed this through the struggles of so many of the characters, not just…