In South of the Border, West of the Sun the arc of an average man's life from childhood to middle age with its attendant rhythms of success and disappointment becomes the kind of exquisite literary conundrum that is Haruki Murakami's trademark. The plot is simple: Hajime meets and falls in love with a girl in elementary school but loses touch with her when his family moves to another town. He drifts through high school, college and his 20s before marrying and settling into a career as a successful bar owner. Then his childhood sweetheart returns weighed down with secrets:

"When I went back into the bar, a glass and ashtray remained where she had been. A couple of lightly crushed cigarette butts were lined up in the ashtray, a faint trace of lipstick on each. I sat down and closed my eyes. Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In that gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound".

Murakami eschews the fantastic elements that appear in many of his other novels and stories, and readers hoping for a glimpse of the "Sheep Man" will be disappointed. Yet South of the Border, West of the Sun is as rich and mysterious as anything he has written. It is above all a complex, moving and honest meditation on the nature of love distilled into a work with the crystal clarity of a short story. A Nat King Cole song, a figure on a crowded street, a face pressed against a car window, a handful of ashes drifting down a river to the sea are woven together into a story that refuses to arrive at a simple conclusion. The classic love triangle may seem like a hackneyed theme for a writer as talented as Murakami but in his quietly dazzling way he bends us to his own unique geometry. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com

'A story of love in a cool climate, intensely romantic and weepily beautiful-it is startlingly different: a true original' Guardian

Growing up in the suburbs in post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo.

2008-08-18 Gabriel Vs Rubin- Rubin wins.

This is a quality novella/short story from Murakami. But as an avid fan I was disappointed by the translation. Having read most of Murakami I often feel that Philip Gabriels's translations leave something to be desired or lose the essential message that Murakami tries to put across. If you look at Murakami's best known works- Norwegian Wood, Wind Up Bird, After Dark, these are the bestselling and best loved and it's no coincidence that they are all translated by Jay Rubin. I felt rather distanced from this one and that the meaning needed further interpretation from the reader. The reader is left frustrated by the surrealism of the relationships in South of The Border and overall it feels unfinished. Many things in Murakami are, of course, left unresolved, but somehow a skilled translator is able to suggest an ending to the reader. See Norwegian Wood for an example. Gabriel is unable to do this. There are some great scenes in SOTBWOTS, great atmospherics involving the usual symbols (Coffee, Jazz, cool bars, distant women) but as a whole it is not a good starting point for those reading Murakami for the first time (Try After Dark). I felt, also, that a really good translation could turn this book into something truly great. Unlike manay of Murkami's other works there is a hint of politics in this one- a suggestion of the Author's despair at the greed and state of modern Tokyo- Greed is represented in the form of Yokio's Father- a wealthy industrialist who becomes corrupted. All in all, there is a great novel at the heart of this but it's one to discover when you've already read the really great ones.