The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

A great experience.

More than reading a novel, I feel like I've lived the life of another, like when you wake up from a dream in which you played the part of a fearless hero, doing actions you never could have done.

Toru Okada is thirty years old and leads an ordinary life with his wife Kumiko. However, a strange phone call marks the beginning of a series of unusual events that entirely change the existence of the young protagonist. Everyday life and the ordinary meet with the inexplicable. The plot loses importance, fogged by dense clouds of mystery, from which only the bizarre characters of Haruki Murakami emerge. We are in a dream, we perceive it as readers and the protagonist of the novel perceives it too:

«I listened to the evening news on the radio for the first time in ages, but nothing special had been happening in the world. Some teenagers had been killed in an accident on the expressway when the driver of their car had failed in his attempt to pass another car and crashed into a wall. The branch manager and staff of a major bank were under police investigation in connection with an illegal loan they had made. A thirty-six-year-old housewife from Machida had been beaten to death with a hammer by a young man on the street. But these were all events from some other, distant world. The only thing happening in my world was the rain falling in the yard.»

Side note: with this novel Murakami won the "Yomiuri", a Japanese literary prize, conferred to him by the Nobel Prize Kenzaburō Ōe, previously one of his most ardent critics. What satisfaction!

Vote: 9

Una gran bella esperienza.

Più che aver letto un romanzo, mi sento come se avessi vissuto la vita di un altro, come quando ti svegli da un sogno nel quale hai vestito i panni di un impavido eroe, compiendo azioni che non ritenevi di poter compiere nemmeno di striscio.

Toru Okada ha trent'anni e conduce una vita ordinaria con la moglie Kumiko. Tuttavia una strana telefonata segna l'inizio di una serie di eventi fuori dal comune che cambiano di sana pianta l'esistenza del giovane protagonista. La vita di tutti giorni e l'ordinario si mescolano con l'inspiegabile. La trama in sè perde importanza, annebbiata da dense nuvole di mistero, dalle quali emergono distinti solamente i bizzarri personaggi di Haruki Murakami. Siamo in un sogno, lo percepiamo noi lettori e lo percepisce lo stesso protagonista del romanzo:

«Per la prima volta dopo tanto tempo ascoltai il giornale radio della sera. Nel mondo non era successo nulla di insolito. Su un'autostrada, in un sorpasso una macchina era andata a sbattere contro un muro, e i passeggeri, dei ragazzi, erano morti tutti. Il direttore e alcuni impiegati di una succursale di una grande banca erano stati messi sotto inchiesta dalla polizia per una faccenda di prestiti illegali. A Machida una casalinga di trentasei anni era stata ammazzata a martellate da un giovane che passava di lì. Ma tutto questo succedeva in un mondo diverso. Nel mondo in cui vivevo io c'era solo la pioggia che cadeva nel giardino.»

Piccola nota a margine: con questo romanzo Murakami ha vinto il premio letterario giapponese Yomiuri, conferitogli dal premio nobel Kenzaburō Ōe, uno dei suoi più accaniti critici precedenti. Sò soddisfazioni.

Voto: 9

Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?
...
Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really.
...
The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.

'He became simultaneously the stabber and the stabbed.'