Welcome to the beta version of Shelfari’s new Book Detail pages!
These pages are editable by the community, so please contribute! Click here to learn more about this feature. We’d love to hear your feedback.
Description
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
Cast of Characters
- 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 Okadas.
- Malta Kano: A medium enlisted by the Okadas to help find their missing cat, and who helps Toru after his wife goes missing.
- 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.
Memorable Quotes
-
“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
First Sentence
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.
Table of Contents
Classification
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 895.635
Popular Tags
See all 50 tagsBooks with Additional Background Information
List the books that contain additional information about this book.
Amazon Customers Who Bought This Book Also Bought
If you have any suggestions for how we can improve this page or if there are sections that you would like us to add, please let us know.
