Rubin, Jay
Location: New York :
Subject: General
Subject: Literary
Subject: Fiction
Subject: Japan
Subject: College students
Subject: Love stories
Copyright: 2000
Edition Description: Paperback
Series: Vintage International Original
Date of Publication: September 2000
Cover: Paperback
Grade Level: General/trade
Written in: English
# of Pages: 304
Book Size: 8.02x5.24x.71 in. .57 lbs.
This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event.
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.
Review:
"Norwegian Wood...not only points to but manifests the author's genius." Chicago Tribune
"Murakami tells a subtle, charming, profound and very sexy story of young love bound for tragedy." Publishers Weekly
"[O]ne of Murakami's most appealing — if uncharacteristic — books....[A]nother solid building-block in one of contemporary fiction's most energetic and impressive bodies of work." Kirkus Reviews
"Haruki Murakami is our greatest living practitioner of fiction....The novels aren't afraid to pull tricks usually banned from serious fiction: they are suspenseful, corny, spooky, and hilarious; they're airplane reading, but when you're through you spend the rest of the flight, the rest of the month, rethinking life." Daniel Handler, The Village Voice
"Deeply moving, darkly comic, incredibly beautiful written, and smoothly translated, this is for all literary fiction collections." Library Journal
"Vintage Murakami [and] easily the most erotic of [his] novels." Los Angeles Times Book Review
"[A] treat...Murakami captures the heartbeat of his generation and draws the reader in so completely you mourn when the story is done." The Baltimore Sun
"A world class writer who has both eyes open and takes big risks." Washington Post Book World
"[Murakami belongs] in the topmost rank of writers of international stature." Newsday
