Product Description

'Murakami must already rank among the world's greatest living novelists' Guardian

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14131 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-20
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
As with many of Haruki Murakami's novels, the plot curdles with complex diversity only to be resolved by a collision between wild fantasy and outright slapstick. A Wild Sheep Chase refers aptly to the tradition of cool but kitsch detective sagas. Except here, the metaphoric goose is now a literal sheep with a distinctive marking; an urban myth with the promise of immortality.

The anonymous narrator is a mild-mannered thirtysomething with a more than understanding attitude--things happen because they are supposed to and there's no sense standing in the way of progress or nature. It takes the disappearance of a friend and some gentle intimidation from a right wing conglomerate to break the pattern of apathy and send him off on his adventure.

Murakami's detail of the most mundane situations makes his lead character endearing. Those who've read Murakami before will recognise that certain empathy for the strange thoughts and rituals that are now hallmarks of his wry humour. Although an unlikely hero, the quest for a missing friend and the support of a lover with mysterious ears takes him off in search of the elusive sheep in a bizarre adventure--danger and absurdity hindering every movement. --David Trueman

Synopsis
His life was like his recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold, a runaway friend, a right-wing politico, an ovine-obsessed professor and a manic-depressive in a sheep outfit, implicate them in a hunt for a sheep, that may or may not be running the world, and eth upshot is another singular masterpiece from Japan's finest novelist.

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

Customer Reviews

A near-perfect novel
I was given this for a birthday pressie and left it, unread, on my shelf for a year until a mate saw it and went `Wow! Didn't think you'd like this sort of thing - it's fantastic.' `Oh yeah', I says `wonderful, um, words and that.' And then I thought I really should read it. And it's right up there in my top ten books of all time - absolutely wonderful fusion of small human details, beautiful relationships, a gripping detective story and dreamlike hyper-reality. Sweet, sad and special.

Carefree detective story full of death
Written in 1982, this is the earliest Murakami novel widely available to the English-speaking world, though it isn't Murakami's first novel (he wrote two before this one).

Attempting to find the meaning in this bizaare and surreal detective story will probably always be fruitless, but trying to work it out while reading is so much fun. Reading it again is just as good, as you think that perhaps this time you are ready, this time you will understand what it all means - but you never are ready and you never do understand.

It is worth noting that despite its jaunty and carefree tone, the book is full of death and images of death, which lend it something of a brooding darkeness. It is also worth noting that here is a very early example of Murakami's frequently repeated 'mysterious woman who goes unexplainably missing' trick.

In 1988 Murakami produced a sequel, Dance Dance Dance but, despite being quite frightening and easy to read, it is inferior to Wild Sheep Chase and doesn't stand up to repeated readings.

Remarkable quest for a sheep with a star on its back
The main character is in his twenties, he is divorced, but recently he got a girlfriend "with unbelievably beautiful ears". For his job he has made an advertisement containing a picture of sheep that he received from an old friend -the Rat-, but this has caused him the wrath of the assistant of The Leader. The Leader is a vague but very powerful person who is trying to set up an extremely right-wing empire. He gets his ideas during hallucinations caused be a large aneurysm in his brain and in which a sheep with a star on its back plays a leading role. This sheep is also on the picture used for the advertisement and the assistant orders the main character to find the sheep. After many detours the main person not only finds out what happened to the sheep, but also to his old friend The Rat.

The Japanese writer Haruki Marukami is already for a long time a candidate for the Nobel Prize. This is one of his first books and it already shows his talent to create a special, foreign world (for example: none of the characters in the book has a name), in which he is capable of describing unbelievable events in such a way that they become believable. Maybe this book is still a little bit unbalanced every now and then, but I look forward to reading his next books.