A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel

This was Murakami’s first novel to be published in America, and it is one of his finest. Everything is here: his sense of humor, his sense of the absurd, offbeat side stories, alternate realities, and gorgeous prose. Chapter headings alone give a sense of the wonders to come: Chapter 4: The Whales Penis and the Woman with Three Occupations; and Chapter 6: The Further Adventures of Unblocked Ears. The main story opens with a mysterious stranger arriving at the narrator’s office to discuss a problem. He explains that something is very odd about a photograph of grazing sheep that the narrator’s company has published in a journal. All issues must be destroyed or the narrator’s life will be threatened. The stranger hands the narrator an envelope full of money and sends him to Hokkaido to verify the exact location of the sheep farm. There are a couple of unnecessary chapters midway in the novel (when the narrator is preparing to leave on his journey) that slow the book down, but Murakami quickly recovers. There are so many delights, it’s hard not to mention them all, but by all means search out the story of the worm universe and the cow’s search for pliers. As always, a Murakami novel is fast reading. If Murakami, with his wild imagination and sense of humor, were allowed to rule the world, we would all be wondrously confused and deliriously happy.

Bottom Line First:Murakami is not for those who want the usual in their story telling. Much of the story line is very conventional. A somewhat disaffected, somewhat successful Ad man is dealing with divorce and the dislocations from his youth that happens in the modern world. Suddenly he enters a world of super powerful, threatening men who coerce him into quest for, not the Golden Fleece, but the living sheep with a star on its back. This is very early Murakami. It lacks some of the higher polish of his later works but is free of almost all of his more recent conventions. This makes for an easier read and a more direct story line. Because I have come to admire this writer, I recommend it as a good place to start a reading relationship with a master teller of oddball stories.I first came into contact with Haruki Murakami via his book  1Q84 (Vintage International) . This is a great novel, but I later found that it was based on conventions he had developed several books earlier. My admiration was reduced by the thought that the latter book was not as inventive as I had originally believed.What I should have done, and recommend to others is that you attempt to read his books in order This was difficult to do because he had been reluctant to authorize English editions of his early works. A Wild Sheep Chase is the third book of his Trilogy of the Rat. It was the first that I was easily able to acquire. The good news is that books one and two are now available in one buy:  Wind/Pinball: Two novels . Hear the Wind Song is also his first book. So win/win.It is tricky to define what kind of books Murakami writes. The simple answer is fiction. His fiction tends to include traditional Japanese elements. There is a Spirit world, not always friendly to humans but not evil. As in other Murakami books there are references to a jazz club. (Murakami began his working life managing a jazz club. There are what will become common references to Western styles, food and music. There are parts that might be magic or science fiction and people can have extra real sensitivities.Our Central character, usually described as a Phillip Marlow matter of fact kind of person has as his girlfriend, a woman who is an ear model and is only beautiful when she exposes her ears. She is also capable of hearing signs and portents.This being the end of the trilogy, there are references to a number of characters that we have to accept absent a deep understanding of why they matter to our sheep chaser. However, the book works well as a standalone.A Wild Sheep Chase was for me a change to begin to see a fine story teller in hs early years. I will be going back again to get the rest of this trilogy. My recommendation to you is that Haruki Murakami weaves not just stories but a world. Murakami world is slightly removed from ours. It is a rich and complex world and worth your reading time.

I have now read more than half of Murakami's novels (at least those translated to English). I am beyond entranced and Wild Sheep Chase is certainly a great moment in his writing where it is clear that his voice, themes, and wonderful quirks flow easily and effortlessly. What a great delight!I had been reading "backwards" in time (which seems, in saying so very much a thing Murakami would appreciate). Then, I started reading mainly from his first works forward. It is clear that his voice and style has grown more confident and pure over time. So in Wild Sheep Chase, which is neither his first nor more recent work, it is simply brilliant to see his artistry in a nearly fully honed yet still raw state. All of the elements are present. All of the wonderful prose and beautiful contrast of depth, subtlety, nuance and brash modernity are here.Our hero is imperfect and conflicted. He is faced with a bizarre and absurd choice, taking the wrong option for all the worst (but very human) reasons. He finds himself engulfed in a world that seems similar and parallel, but is clearly not part of reality. Murakami employs no convenient devices to make this seem plausible; on the contrary woos us with mysticism entwined with humor and a wry wink, a nearly constant aside, to the reader. The plot is known from nearly the start, and the outcome is a mystery to ... or perhaps beyond ... the end. Joy!If you're reading his (still forming) opus in order, you'll see a bit of a jolt in this work -- a moment where it becomes clear that the author has found all the bits that will make his other novels great. I haven't read them all yet, but it will not be long before I do. This is a moment of Murakami building, and it is stunning, both in itself as a great novel, and as well a brilliant flash of what is yet to come.

I like Japanese novels, but you have to be willing to suspend reality and live in the world in the book. In The Wild Sheep Chase I had to believe a young man could be so placid, loyal and willing to give-up everything to go on a strange adventure--even his nameless cat.It took me awhile to like this book and frankly, I never did understand it. Still, I ended-up loving it, but I can't tell you why. It's silly and weird, but that's what I like about most Japanese novels. I liked it so much I ended-up ordering the other Rat book.

I've first read this book when i was 15? And i still love it. It was my introduction to murakami and if it wasn't for this book i would've stopped reading this author (kafka on the shore iykyk)

The style of writing reminds me of catch22. You don’t realise how the plot moves swiftly even though all the mundane things explained with all the time in the world. Feels like Written with a relaxed mind and restless soul.

Our protagonist’s life has ground to his halt: his wife has divorced him after having an affair, his business is grinding to a halt as the friend with whom he founded it steadily succumbs to alcoholism, and his best friend Rat disappeared years ago – only occasionally sending bizarre, non-sequitur letters containing money or more recently a picture of some sheep.This picture becomes important, however, because it contains the image of a sheep with the mark of a star – a sheep that is of great interest to the shadowy right-wing organisation that have controlled Japan for years. An organisation that will pay him a great deal of money to find that sheep – or destroy him if he does not.Spurred on by his new girlfriend and her magical ears, this man with no motivation finds himself on a quest to find a single lost sheep on a mountainside in a country full of mountains. What he finds will make all that seem relatively normal.[MORE]What an exceptional book. To start off with it feels like a combination of the surreal humour of Douglas Adam’s Holistic Detective Agency combined with the magical reality of good Rushdie. But this is entirely its own creature. The translation is marvellous and the prose pure poetry – although the author seems to be obsessed with the main characters liquid consumption and expulsion! Plus, the smoking. Never has a book with so many cigarette breaks been so readable.I’m relatively new to Japanese literature – I’ve only read a dozen or so books (although naturally far more manga and all the Final Fantasy computer games!) – but there does seem to be a certain melancholy that keeps cropping up. Murakami makes the mundane interesting, the simple beautiful, and never lets the sadness drag the book down - far from it, I had to fight the temptation to skip to the last ten pages to find out how things worked out. But it is sad. Some things that are lost are never found. Some things that are found stay lost.This book does an exquisite job of showing sadness. I can’t wait to read more of his work.

havent read the book yet but it came with creases in the book spine and a light fold on the cover.

Proud to say I first read A Wild Sheep Chase back around the late '80s before Murakami was famous, and now I recommend it to others as the best place to start if you're curious about this celebrated author. It has many of the motifs that have become mainstays of his novels such as a mystery, a quest, pop culture references, oddly metaphysical encounters and suggestions of an alternate reality. In fact, you might call it a metaphysical detective story. While Murakami wrote several works beforehand (Hear The Wind Sing, Pinball, Norwegian Wood), in my opinion this was his first real mature work, exhibiting the matter of fact economy of style that has won him so many fans. Some should be warned, like a few other Murakami works it ends in an ambiguous fashion, but that's part of what keeps you thinking years afterwards. Enjoy.