The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

A man’s cat disappears, then his wife does, and the search takes him down a dry well, into the Japanese army’s war in Manchuria, and through a cast of psychics, politicians and strangers who tell him long stories. The novel Murakami won the Yomiuri Literary Award for, and the one where the realism of Norwegian Wood gives way entirely to the architecture of the unconscious.

Context: second of the four titles under the a16z list’s Murakami author entry. The team’s note names “wells that lead to alternate dimensions” as the Murakami signature, which is this book literally.

Connections

• a16z Infra Reading List — the list this came from; Fantasy section, Murakami author entry.
• Haruki Murakami — the author.
• Norwegian Wood — first of the four selected works.
• Kafka on the Shore — third of the four.
• 1Q84 — fourth of the four.
• a16z — the firm whose infrastructure team curates the list.