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Norwegian Wood (Vintage books) (Paperback)
Short Description for Norwegian WoodToru Watanabe is looking back on the love and passions of his life and trying to make sense of it all. As his first love Naoko sinks deeper into mental despair, he is inexorably pushed to find a new meaning and a new love in order to survive.
Full description- Publisher: VINTAGE
- Published: 17 May 2001
- Format: Paperback 400 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Contemporary Fiction
- ISBN 13: 9780099448822 ISBN 10: 0099448823
- Sales rank: 794
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Reviews for Norwegian Wood
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Top review
More so an experience and observation of fine writing than story
Though Norwegian Wood raised Murakami from his quiet and brilliant existence to celebrated international territory, I meet it's common designation as his best work with disagreement. It pales in light of A Wild Sheep Chase, written five years before, and sequel Dance Dance Dance. However Norwegian Wood is still an exemplary model of his unparalleled prose.
Murakami's use of language in Norwegian Wood creates a near-tangible experience. One A5 page takes us, as Toru Watanabe, from feeling the reckless and smoggy consciousness of Watanabe's existence in Tokyo to his hypnagogic state in a mountainside sanatorium with Naoko.
This hypnagogic prose, albeit making the storyline less addictive, highlights the philosophies of Murakami's novel: it recognises nostalgia and the progressively sleepy memories at the back of his and all of our minds; the fervent attempts to piece together such moments and people we thought we'd never forget and the cold shower when you realise how fallible memory can be.
This is not the done-in-one-sitting-story but a beautiful prototype of Murakami's writing, the result of a master of words and the human condition. To achieve this in translation is to be applauded. I defy you to read one Murakami and not consume another. by Rowan Allen
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