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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Haruki Murakami

Illustrated by Daniel Liévano

Translated by Jay Rubin

The latest addition to our best-selling Murakami collection, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a masterpiece exploring the surreal that is hidden in plain sight. This beautiful edition is illustrated by award-winning series artist Daniel Liévano.

£85.00

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Toru Okada lived a relatively simple life. Now, his cat has gone missing, he receives mysterious telephone calls, and his once loving wife grows more distant by the day. As he struggles to come to terms with what’s happening, Toru must navigate an increasingly surreal series of discoveries and encounters. Ostensibly a story about marriage, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle weaves its way between and among genres and themes, with Murakami’s trademark narrative style and complex characters. Designed in series with the best-selling Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood, this latest addition to our Murakami collection sees the return of conceptual artist Daniel Liévano. Having won a prestigious Society of Illustrators Silver Medal for his work on Kafka on the Shore, Liévano once again demonstrates his innate understanding of Murakami’s imaginary worlds; his dreamlike illustrations perfectly in tune with the author’s ethereal prose.

Discover Folio editions of other Murakami novels here.

Bound in blocked cloth

Set in Arno with Futura as display

688 pages

Frontispiece plus 6 colour illustrations, including 3 double-page spreads, each with a yellow motif on the reverse

Printed throughout in black and blue, including 44 illustrated motifs

Metallic printed endpapers

Blocked and die-cut slipcase

10˝ x 6 ¾˝

Murakami is known for creating enchanted worlds that exist in plain sight and filling them with characters that are endearing yet complex. He transforms apparently conventional domestic scenes into explosions of surreal events that turn his protagonists’ worlds upside down. A quiet man of simple pleasures, Toru embarks on a bizarre journey to disentangle the truth from the many stories he has been told in an attempt to make sense of his new, disordered life. From his wife Kumiko, who disappears shortly after the cat, to her sociopathic older brother Noboru and their nihilistic neighbour May, the characters in this postmodern fairytale drag Toru and the reader out of their comfort zones. With Daniel Liévano on hand to visualise the story, this is the must-have edition for Murakami fans.

About Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949. He grew up in Kobe and studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he later opened a jazz bar with his wife. In 1979 Murakami won the Gunzou Literature Prize for his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, which was followed by Pinball, 1973 (1980) and A Wild Sheep Chase (1982). Further renown followed with Norwegian Wood (1987; Folio 2022), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95; Folio 2023), Kafka on the Shore (2002; Folio 2021) and 1Q84 (2009–10). To date, Murakami’s work has been translated into more than 50 languages and his accolades include the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize.

About Daniel Liévano

Daniel Liévano was born in Bogotá in 1988. As an editorial illustrator he has devoted most of his work to the creation of conceptual images for clients including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Economist, The Sunday Times, Victionary and The Lancet. As an author and illustrator, Daniel likes to explore abstraction, taking information from other media such as poetry and independent film. His experimental comic book, The Mountain of Reality, was listed by Arcadia Magazine as among the best books published in Colombia and his second graphic novel, Gravity, was awarded the Gold Medal in the Book category from The Society of Illustrators in New York. For the Folio Society he has illustrated Kafka on the Shore (2021), Norwegian Wood (2022) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (2023).

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