| NOTA |
()(Translated by Alfred Birnbaum^@Titulo original : rðß®é`¯ [Hitsuji o meguru booken]^@With the publication of LA Wild Sheep ChaseL, readers in the West will be introduced to the prodigious talents of Haruki Murakami, the leading novelist of modern Japan. Murakami has been lauded by Japanese critics and readers alike, hailed as the distinctive voice of a new generation. It is a voice that readers, literally in the millions, have given themselves over to, a voice the likes of which no Western reader of Japanese fiction will have encountered before. The time is now. The setting is Japan --minus the kimono and the impenetrable mystique of an exotic, distant culture.^@The narrator, identified only by a pronoun, is on principle an ordinary fellow. Thirty years old, he has more intelligence than an overachieving businessman, but no ambition and little purpose. Enter into his lackluster life a young woman, apparently ordinary as well but with ears so gorgeous that all conversation stops in the presence of their unveiling ; a right-wing boss with a golfball-size blood cyst in his brain whoLs unaccountably been spared standing trial as a Lass A war criminal ; a sinister, all-efficient lieutenant with beautiful hands and a degree from Stanford ; and a brilliant professor permanently sidetracked by an animal experience that in forty-two years has not dimmed in significance.^@Inexorably, all are impelled into the bizarre pursuit of a dream-induced sheep. But this is no ordinary sheep. With a star on its back, eyes as clear as spring water, and a near-irresistible spiritual allure, the sheep embodies a perverse Nietzschean will to absolute power. The pursuit of this fantastic supersheep begins in the urban haunts of Tokyo, continues at a garish suburban estate, and culminates in the lonely mountainous snow country of Hokkaido. Here, in Haruki MurakamiLs dazzling debut in the West, is a feat of the imagination, a tale--not easily forgotten--of enchantment, suspense, and human mystery.^@Born in Kobe in 1949, Haruki Murakami studied classic Greek drama at Waseda University, then managed a jazz bar in Tokyo from 1974 to 1981, during which time he published three novels. The third of these was LA Wild Sheep Chase,L which earned him JapanLs prestigious Noma Literary Award for New Writers and ended his career at the jazz bar. His next novel, LThe End of the World and the Hard-Boiled Wonderland,L won him the coveted Tanizaki Prize. With the publication of LNorwegian WoodL in 1987, the dam seemed to burst. The novel, issued in two volumes, has sold to date a total of 4.01 million copies. LDance, Dance, Dance,L the sequel to LA Wild Sheep Chase,L is his most recent work ; published in 1988, in nine months it has sold over a million copies. Between books, Murakami has translated novels by F.Scott Fitgerald, John Irving, Paul Theroux, Raymond Carver, and Tim OLBrien into Japanese. He lives in Rome, Italy.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
Print Page