September 25, 2025 by A.S. Van Dorston

Favorite books #10. “There is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”

Murakami isn’t for everyone. With multiple storylines that make leaps in time, space and even realities, his novels are filled with ghosts, talking animals, existential ponderings, and often references to WWII. Yet his clean, simple prose make the seemingly confusing mix of magical realism and surrealism a pleasure to read, as long as you’re willing to go with the flow.

Our main character Toru Okada begins a quest to find his missing cat, and soon his wife goes missing too. On his surreal journey he encounters a psychic teenager May Kasahara and the mysterious Nutmeg and Cinnamon, while also uncovering the forgotten history of Japan’s wartime atrocities in Manchuria. It sounds like a hot mess, but taken as a whole, one can unpack all kinds of fascinating threads of exploring the subconscious to contend with buried memories of personal and historical trauma, inner demons, and identity and how they’re all connected.

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o’clock in the morning.”

There’s at least five contenders for his best book, depending on who you ask. While Norwegian Wood (1987) is often recommended as an entrypoint, I was gifted with The Wind-Up Bird Chronical shortly after the English translation was published in 1997, my first exposure to Murakami. It took a while to sink in, as my initial reaction was, what the heck did I just read? But like particular dreams that persist in your memory, this book haunted me, and drew me back in over the years.