A novel about Toru Okada, an unemployed man living a quiet suburban life in Tokyo. When his cat disappears and then his wife vanishes, he begins a strange search that leads him to odd neighbours, a gifted young woman, and a dry well where he can think. Interwoven with his story are accounts of wartime violence in Manchuria, which link private loss to Japan's historical past. The book mixes domestic mystery, dream and history, and is often seen as Murakami's most ambitious work.
Quotes
Money had no name of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.
He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual.
Grammar is like the air: someone higher up might try to set rules for its use, but people won't necessarily follow them.