Norwegian Wood (Vintage International)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.37 (813 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B003XT603Q |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 504 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-08-02 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
First American PublicationThis stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event.Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.
The collapse of a romance (and this is one among many!) leaves him in a metaphysical shambles: I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with the same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko stared into my eyes. --Mark Thwaite. Readers of Murakami's later work will discover an affecting if atypical novel, and while the author himself has denied the book's autobiographical import--"If I had simply written the literal truth of my own life, the novel would have been no more than fifteen pages long"--it's hard not to read as at least a partial portrait of the artist as a young man. This account of a young man's sentimental education sometimes reads like a cross between Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Stephen Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women. Norwegian Wood is a simple coming-of-age tale, primarily set in 1969-70, when the author
Angst & Alienation SassyPants Maybe this is not the best book to read during beautiful summer days. This is my first book by Haruki Murakami and I am not eager to try any more of them. Reviews of his work mention his humor. The only part of this book that was amusing to me was the port. "Amazing Japanese Coming of Age Story" according to TalkALot. I don't know why I love this book so much. I've always been fascinated about Japanese culture, and maybe that's why. But the way this story is told, from the perspective of a young Japanese student in the late 1960s Tokyo, in a simple, straightforward mann. saraneeko said amazing book, definitely read.. I LOVED THIS BOOK. I had purchased it originally because I was going through and reading some of the great "classics" in world literature, and this was one of them. I had no idea what it was about, and this book truly changed my life. It's a great coming o