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Description edit
Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. In a Tokyo... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters edit
- Toru Okada: The protagonist, an unemployed man living in suburban Japan.
- Kumiko Okada: Toru's wife, who has mysteriously disappeared.
- Noboru Wataya: Toru's brother in law, a media darling and politician, who is all style and no substance. Also the name of the Okadas' cat.
- May Kasahara: The Okadas' neighbor, a teenage girl who stays home from school.
- Lieutenant Mamiya: An officer in Japan's war in Manchukuo; an acquaintance of the Toru Okada.
- Malta Kano: A medium enlisted by the Okadas to help find their missing cat.
- Creta Kano: Malta's younger sister, who describes herself as a "prostitute of the mind."
- Nutmeg: A rich woman who meets the despondant Toru on a bench in Shinjuku and becomes his benefactor. Her real name is never revealed.
- Cinnamon: Nutmeg's adult son, who never speaks, and whose real name is never revealed.
- Mr. Honda: An acquaintance of the Okadas, performs professional divining services for the couple.
- Ushikawa: Goon hired to manipulate Toru Okada.
Quotes edit
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“I felt as if I had become part of a badly written novel, that someone was taking me to task for being utterly unreal. And perhaps it was true.”
Toru Okada -
“"Tell me, she said, picking up her earlier conversation. "If you were in love with a girl and she turned out to have six fingers, what would you do?""”
May Kasahara -
“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?”
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“I happened to lose my life at one particular moment in time, and I have gone on living these forty years or more with my life lost. As a person who finds himself in such a position, I have come to think that life is far more limited thing than those in the midst of its maelstrom realize. The light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment - perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and one has failed to grasp its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of one's life in hopeless depths of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look forward to anything. All that such a peson holds in his hands is the withered corpse of what should have been."”
Lieutenant Mamiya -
“"Probably someone should take this girl in his arms and hold her tight, I thought. Probably someone other than me. Someone qualified to give her something."”
Toru Okada
First Sentence edit
When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture of the Rossini's The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.
Themes & Symbolism edit
Series & Lists edit
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This is book 125 of 1271 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)
Preceded by The Master of Petersburg, and followed by Pereira Declares: A Testimony.
First Edition edit
Original Language: Japanese
Publisher: Shinchosha
Country: Japan
Publication Date: 1994
ISBN: 0679775439
Page Count: 607
Publisher: Shinchosha
Country: Japan
Publication Date: 1994
ISBN: 0679775439
Page Count: 607
Awards edit
- International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (Finalist, 1999, Shortlist)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: PL856.U673
- Dewey: 895.635
Subjects edit
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