Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat.Soon he finds hims...

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat.Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo.As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

村上春樹（1949- ），日本小說家。曾在早稻田大學(xué)文學(xué)部戲劇科就讀。1979年，他的第一部小說《聽風(fēng)之歌》問世后，即被搬上了銀幕。隨后，他的優(yōu)秀作品《1973年的彈子球》、《尋羊冒險(xiǎn)記》、《挪威的森林》等相繼發(fā)表。他的創(chuàng)作不受傳統(tǒng)拘束，構(gòu)思新奇，行文瀟灑自在，而又不流于庸俗淺薄。尤其是在刻畫人的孤獨(dú)無奈方面更有特色，他沒有把這種情緒寫成負(fù)的東西，而是通過內(nèi)心的心智性操作使之升華為一種優(yōu)雅的格調(diào)，一種樂在其中的境界，以此來為讀者，尤其是生活在城市里的人們提供了一種生活模式或生命的體驗(yàn)。