Product Description

Growing up in the suburbs in post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18086 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Original language: Japanese
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In South of the Border, West of the Sun the arc of an average man's life from childhood to middle age with its attendant rhythms of success and disappointment becomes the kind of exquisite literary conundrum that is Haruki Murakami's trademark. The plot is simple: Hajime meets and falls in love with a girl in elementary school but loses touch with her when his family moves to another town. He drifts through high school, college and his 20s before marrying and settling into a career as a successful bar owner. Then his childhood sweetheart returns weighed down with secrets:

"When I went back into the bar, a glass and ashtray remained where she had been. A couple of lightly crushed cigarette butts were lined up in the ashtray, a faint trace of lipstick on each. I sat down and closed my eyes. Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In that gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound".

Murakami eschews the fantastic elements that appear in many of his other novels and stories, and readers hoping for a glimpse of the "Sheep Man" will be disappointed. Yet South of the Border, West of the Sun is as rich and mysterious as anything he has written. It is above all a complex, moving and honest meditation on the nature of love distilled into a work with the crystal clarity of a short story. A Nat King Cole song, a figure on a crowded street, a face pressed against a car window, a handful of ashes drifting down a river to the sea are woven together into a story that refuses to arrive at a simple conclusion. The classic love triangle may seem like a hackneyed theme for a writer as talented as Murakami but in his quietly dazzling way he bends us to his own unique geometry. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com

About the Author
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo.

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Customer Reviews

My favourite Murakami so far
After reading Norwegian Wood, I found Murakami an author I would like to read much more of. After The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and The Elephan Vanishes, I have to admit South of the Border, West of the Sun is my favourite.

Only 200 or so pages, this book is one of the most touching love stories I have ever read, although at no point does it become overly sentimental.It mixes together fate, love, duty and choice and one man's dilemma between the life he knows and the love he longs for since his childhood.

Enigmatic, beautifully written and utterly brilliant.

Stunning novel, a must-read for all Murakami fans
If you have never read anything from Murakami you might just as well start from here (and then, once you are 'hooked' - which you will be - move on to Norwegian Wood and Dance Dance Dance).

Even the setting eventually reminded me a bit of Norwegian Wood (which I read after this one) it is an utterly magical novel, and if you think you would never read a 'love story', well, read this one and expect to feel deeply shaken.

This is not (only) about love, or lost opportunities, or the constant tension between marriage, love and friendship - this is a book about feelings, about life and, most of all, about everybody's sense of loss when we make "sensible" choices in life, that end up making us, in the end, deeply dissatisfied with our lives...

Really one is without words when it comes to review a Murakami book, all is that to be said is: thanks to those who initally got me to read one, and to those who have never read him, start today!

I have probably already said this on some other reviews, when it comes to Murakami, 5 star is not enough...

Painful, rainy nights, beautifully presented.
I had recently finished Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood” – this was my second experience of his writing. I adored this book too. Much shorter than “Norwegian Wood”, it was equally poignant, painful and exquisite. The premise is simple, the return in adulthood of a childhood sweetheart, and the consequences. The execution is beautiful. Murakami has a magical way of wrapping the reader in the pain of his characters.

I admit to having been frustrated by Shimamoto, a character about whom we never learn very much. This is the point though, neither does Hajime, who has kept her in his thoughts since childhood. It is powerful that their strong hold over one another is based primarily on the past and memory, as is so often the case in life. I agree with another reviewer that the strength of the bond seems disproportionate to the picture of the childhood that is portrayed, but I think this demonstrates that over time our memory distorts reality and turns it into something so much more perfect and desirable. Hajime admits to being nostalgic, and I think that’s the key to understanding the passionate hold Shimamoto still has over him in adulthood.

I like Hajime, I believe the character, I feel for his difficulties, because he is reasonably uncomplicated, steadily making his way through life without deliberate aims or purpose, like so many of us! I think his fixation on Shimamoto gives him purpose, for a while.

Murakami’s beautiful mastery of words makes poetry of his prose, and it flows fantastically, with some breath-taking moments. But the pain portrayed is acute, and readers cannot help but feel a proportion of this pain themselves.

This is a beautiful book that I would not hesitate to recommend.