A novel of youth and loss, set in Tokyo in the late 1960s. Toru Watanabe, now an adult, looks back on his student years, when the city was full of protest and change. He is haunted by the memory of a close friend, and he becomes drawn to Naoko, a fragile young woman who shares that grief. At the same time he meets Midori, a lively and outspoken classmate who pulls him toward ordinary life. The book is a tender, realistic story about love, desire and mental fragility. It is Murakami's most conventional novel and brought him enormous fame in Japan.
Quotes
I'm confused. Really confused. And it's a lot deeper than you think.
Death exists - in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a billiard table - and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust.
Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Each Sunday I would have a date with my dead friend's girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do.
I would stare at the grains of light suspended in that silent space, struggling to see into my own heart. What did I want? And what did others want from me? But I could never find the answers. Sometimes I would reach out and try to grasp the grains of light, but my fingers touched nothing.