Wind/Pinball includes Haruki Murakami's first two novels, published back-to-back, available for the first time in English outside Japan. With a new introduction by the author.
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in
downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to
him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear
the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the
following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was
Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a
writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were
translated into many languages, including English, and the door was
thrown wide open to Murakami’s unique and addictive fictional
universe.
Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a
day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance
running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and
races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records
and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I
Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and
they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing
quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of
imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,
1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious
and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant
readers, ensuring Murakami’s place as one of the world’s most
acclaimed and well-loved writers.
Murakami fans will no doubt delight in this new publication. For
newcomers, these early works are an excellent introduction to a
writer who has since become one of the most influential novelists
of his generation
*Observer*
Murakami’s way of making emotionally resonant images and symbols
bump around on the page, and in one’s mind, remains fresh,
miraculously, more than 35 years on
*Evening Standard*
Wind/Pinball is a fresh, heart-warming dose of the Japanese
master
*Economist*
quintessential Murakami… an excellent introduction to a writer who
has since become one of the most influential novelists of his
generation
*Hannah Beckerman*
This two-for-the-price-of-one hardback really is something special…
The decorative covers are exquisite, but it is the literature
between them that cemented Murakami as one of the world’s most
celebrated writers
*Travel Guide*
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