Killing Commendatore: A Novel

A Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, Library Journal, LitHub, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year

The epic new novel from the internationally acclaimed and best-selling author of 1Q84

In Killing Commendatore, a 30-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious 13-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist’s home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors.

A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art - as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby - Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers.

“A spellbinding parable of art, history, and human loneliness.” (O, The Oprah Magazine)

“Expansive and intricate...touches on many of the themes familiar in Mr. Murakami’s novels: the mystery of romantic love, the weight of history, the transcendence of art, the search for elusive things just outside our grasp.” (The New York Times)

“Eccentric and intriguing, Killing Commendatore is the product of a singular imagination.... Murakami is a wiz at melding the mundane with the surreal.... He has a way of imbuing the supernatural with uncommon urgency. His placid narrative voice belies the utter strangeness of his plot.... The worldview of Murakami’s novels is consistent, and it’s invigorating. In this book and many that came before it, he urges us to embrace the unusual, accept the unpredictable." (San Francisco Chronicle)

“Exhilarating.... Only in the calm madness of his magical realism can Murakami truly capture one of his obsessions, the usually ineffable yearning that drives a person to make art.” (The Washington Post)