The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

First edition in English. 8vo. Pp. [viii], 611, [2]. Blue illustrated paper-covered boards with cover design by Chris Ware. Jacket design by Chip Kidd (priced $25.95 to front flap).

Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin in conjunction with the author – an effort that earned Rubin the 2003 Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Two chapters were initially published in The New Yorker as "The Zoo Attack" (Jul 31, 1995) and "Another Way to Die" (Jan 20, 1997). While a slightly different version of the first chapter, translated by Alfred Birnbaum, was published under the title "The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women", in the 1993 collection The Elephant Vanishes. Originally published in three separate volumes as Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru by Shinchosa Ltd., Tokyo, in 1994/95. Some 25,000 words – 61 out of the original 1,379 pages – were cut out for the English translation, and chapter order re-arranged, to accommodate a single-volume edition.

Winner of the 1995 Yomiuri Prize. A blend of a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, an investigation of suppressed war memories and a young man's search for his own identity. "Mesmerizing... Murakami's most ambitious attempt yet to stuff all of modern Japan into a single fictional edifice." –The Washington Post Book World