A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel Paperback – April 9, 2002 by Haruki Murakami

Description

Author: Haruki Murakami

Brand: Vintage

Color: Multicolor

Features:

• Vintage

Package Dimensions: 23x201x272

Number Of Pages: 353

Release Date: 09-04-2002

Details: Product Description
Quirky and utterly captivating, A Wild Sheep Chase is Murakami at his astounding best.

An advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend and casually appropriates the image for an advertisement. What he doesn’t realize is that included in the scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes readers from Tokyo to the remote mountains of northern Japan, where the unnamed protagonist has a surprising confrontation with his demons.
Review
“Murakami is a mythmaker for the millennium, a wiseacre wiseman.” –
New York Times Book Review “A delight . . . equal parts screwball comedy, detective story, and heroic quest.” –
USA Today
“A witty adventure . . . a piece of verbal anarchy . . . a labyrinthine mystery from start to finish.” –
San Francisco Chronicle
“Marvelously engaging, at turns witty, dry, wicked, even loopy. Reading
A Wild Sheep Chase is like spending a splendidly foul weekend with the Four Raymonds–Chandler, Carver, Massey, and Queneau.”–Frederick Barthelme
From the Inside Flap
A marvelous hybrid of mythology and mystery,
A Wild Sheep Chase
is the extraordinary literary thriller that launched Haruki Murakami?s international reputation.

It begins simply enough: A twenty-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend, and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company?s advertisement. What he doesn?t realize is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our hero from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan, where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself. Quirky and utterly captivating,
A Wild Sheep Chase is Murakami at his astounding best.
From the Back Cover
A marvelous hybrid of mythology and mystery, A Wild Sheep Chase” is the extraordinary literary thriller that launched Haruki Murakami’s international reputation.
It begins simply enough: A twenty-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend, and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company’s advertisement. What he doesn’t realize is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our hero from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan, where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself. Quirky and utterly captivating, A Wild Sheep Chase is Murakami at his astounding best.
About the Author
Born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949, Haruki Murakami grew up in Kobe and now lives near Tokyo. The most recent of his many honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Kobo Abe. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Part OneNovember 25, 19701 Wednesday Afternoon Picnic

It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition. A friend rang me up and read it to me. Nothing special. Something a rookie reporter fresh out of college might’ve written for practice.

The date, a street corner, a person driving a truck, a pedestrian, a casualty, an investigation of possible negligence.

Sounded like one of those poems