The Story Archive

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Haruki Murakami · 1995 CE · Novel · Japanese · Contemporary

Toru Okada, out of work in a Tokyo suburb, loses the cat and then his wife, and the search hands him from stranger to stranger: two sisters who divine by water, a lieutenant with an account of Nomonhan in 1939 and a man skinned alive in Manchuria, the teenager over the fence. Against them stands his brother-in-law, a telegenic politician whose gift is for hollowing people out. Okada climbs down a dry well to think; the opening chapter began as a shorter piece published nine years earlier.

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Attributes

Genre
MysteryFantasyHistorical
Theme
Memory & TimeWar & ViolenceIdentity & SelfPower & CorruptionIsolation & Alienation
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanVillain / TyrantShadow
Plot structure
Nonlinear / FracturedPolyphonicThe Quest
Symbol / motif
The Fall / DescentThe WoundThe Battlefield
Conflict
vs Personvs Selfvs Supernatural
Mode / tone
Magical RealistIronic
Culture / tradition
Japanese

Closest analogues