"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me" "Norwegian Wood" (Lennon/McCartney).

With Norwegian Wood Murakami, best known as the author of off-kilter classics such as the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard Boiled Wonderland, finally achieved widespread acclaim in his native Japan. The novel sold upwards of 4 million copies and forced the author to retreat to Europe, fearful of the expectations accompanying his new-found cult status.

The novel is atypical for Murakami: seemingly autobiographical, in the tradition of many Japanese "I" novels, Norwegian Wood is a simple coming of age tale set, primarily, in 1969/70, the time of Murakami's own university years. The political upheavals and student strikes of the period form the backdrop of the novel but the focus here is the young Watanabe's love affairs and the pain (and pleasure) of growing up with all its attendant losses, (self-)obsessions and crises.

The novel is split into two volumes and beautifully presented here in a "gold" box containing both the green book and the red book. Young Japanese fans became so obsessed with the work that they would dress entirely in one or other colour denoting which volume they most identified with. And the novel is hugely affecting, reading like a cross between Plath's Bell Jar and Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women, if less complex and ultimately less satisfying than Murakami's other, more allegorical, work. He captures the huge expectation of youth, and of this particular time in history, for the future and for the place of love in it. He also saturates the work with sadness, an emotion that can cripple a novel but which here underscores the poignancy of the work's rather thin subject matter. --Mark Thwaite

When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.

One of the nine titles in the Vintage East promotion

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

2008-09-03 A Fantastic Read

Like many others on here, this was my first stab at Japanese fiction but I was drawn into the story right from the beginning.
This is essentially a very sad love story. I am not normally a love story person but the character of Toru Watanabe is fascinating. He drinks, smokes and has casual sex but he is also intelligent, charming (without meaning to be) and very sensitive. He is great with words and fantastic at communicating not only what he thinks and feels but also what others are thinking and feeling. Watanabe is a complex and confused character; he makes mistakes, treats people badly and does not always understand his own reactions to situations.
The other characters in the book are just as important as Watanabe and I especially loved the scenes with Reiko. Storm Trooper added some humour and the scenes in the hospital with Midori's dying father were so tender.
The story is simply 'boy loves girl but another girl loves boy', which makes the plot sound awful but it's not. It also paints a good picture of student life in Japan in the 60's.
Overall, a beautiful, dreamlike story which is very honest and touching. I'm now going in search for other Haruki Murakami books.