The Wind - Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami Book Review

 The Wind - Up Bird Chronicle 

By Haruki Murakami 

Published Year: 1997 [ English Version]

Page Count: 605 pages 

Medium Used: Paperback 

Genre : Fantasy,  Magical Realism, Historical Fiction, World War II, Nomonhan incident, Romance, Multiverse, Weird Characters, 2026-read. 

Rating : 5/5 😀😀😀😀😀

Perhaps the first book of Murakami that I have given a 5 star rating. I have loved all his works but never found something that resonated deep with me. Like this one did. For once, I thought he set the smut and sexual stuff between main characters on a back seat. The main theme is to rid the world of a monstrous personality with some secret power and then win his wife back, rescued from the clutches of this dark person. There are a horde of very unusual and troubling characters( some are very weird) who share their pasts and stories with the narrator. Sometimes they make sense and sometimes they don't. Some explanations made me laugh out loud, some had me cringe and question my logic. But overall, I was hooked like a fish to a bait. I couldn't stop reading. There are some scenes from the Nomonhan incident in 1938 recollecting border skirmishes between  Japan and Russia during which some Japanese prisoners were skinned alive, some were brutally tortured with insertion of hot coal pokers into their body orifices, left to die from starvation etc which the author wrote as though merely reporting a fact that is long past and I felt grateful for this detachment. At times these recollections/experiences of the war from 1938 - 1945 by Lt. Mamiya felt a bit distracting but I guess they are needed to make the picture whole. I felt riveted absolutely.

Coming to the story, Toru Okada is leading a very normal life with his wife Komiko when suddenly their cat disappears. Shortly after that, his wife also leaves him and later he gets to know through a letter that she wants divorce from him because she has slept with another man and is now through with Okada. Strangely, he finds it in him to forgive her and win her back. What he doesn't understand is why she has gone back to her family and her elder brother, Naboru Wataya, who abused and was responsible for her sister's early death. A psychic person called Malta Cano enters his life and tries to help him find his cat and also broker peace between Okada and Naboru Wataya. She disappears suddenly from the story and I didn't know if her character played any significant role. Also her sister, Creta  Cano.. definitely the weirdest character i have ever come across.. she transitions from absolute physical pain to absolute prostitution to absolute abstinence. She incites Okada into having physical relationship with her so that some defilement from her past is removed from her psyche. A lot of the times, I felt the author has gotten away with his explanations like "something unusual has done this", without actually giving an idea into what that might be - this didn't explain it fully for me and I had to sidestep these points. Mostly with women and their sexual defilements, deviations. Also, Creta has the ability to walk into Okada's psyche where she has sex with him and that manifests in reality. Totally crazy. 

Enter lieutenant Mamiya who tells his story of being a prisoner during the  Nomonhan incident in 1938 and later also being taken to Serbia as Russian prisoner in 1945 - 1947. This is one of the normal characters of the book. He was also tormented but due to luck or God's grace, escaped the fate of many of his fellow prisoners. And then there is May Kasahara - she is Okada's neighbor, a teenager who does crazy stuff on a whim. Okada shapes her life in a productive way. She ends the tale with some important part to play in his survival. Nutmeg and Cinnamon - yes, those are their names - it was interesting to see their parts in the whole and I liked the short tale that related how Cinnamon becomes a mute person. Definitely read this one - its a hit for all magical realism lovers!