description: 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.
language: English
title: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
titlecomplete: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
characters: Toru Okada, Malta Kano, Nutmeg Akasaka, Kumiko Okada, Creta Kano, May Kasahara, Noboru Wataya, Boris Gromov, Cinnamon Akasaka, Ushikawa, Tokutaro Mamiya
genres: Asia, Japanese Literature, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Fantasy, Mystery, Fiction, Contemporary, Magical Realism
ratings_count: 273392
places: Japan, Tokyo
series: ねじまき鳥クロニクル
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize
category: the Translation of Japanese Literature, awardedAt: 788947200000
name: Yomiuri Prize 読売文学賞
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Dublin Literary Award
category: Shortlist
publisher: Random House Value Publishing