a book
South of the Border, West of the Sun
Haruki Murakami · 2000 · 213 pages
South of the Border, West of the Sun is the beguiling story of a past rekindled, and one of Haruki Murakami’s most touching novels.
Hajime has arrived at middle age with a loving family and an enviable career, yet he feels incomplete. When a childhood friend, now a beautiful woman, shows up with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime’s quotidian existence begin to give way. Rich, mysterious, and quietly dazzling, in South of the Border, West of the Sun the simple arc of one man’s life becomes the exquisite literary terrain of Murakami’s remarkable genius.
Hajime has arrived at middle age with a loving family and an enviable career, yet he feels incomplete. When a childhood friend, now a beautiful woman, shows up with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime’s quotidian existence begin to give way. Rich, mysterious, and quietly dazzling, in South of the Border, West of the Sun the simple arc of one man’s life becomes the exquisite literary terrain of Murakami’s remarkable genius.
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Kazuo Ishiguro
“I have a thing for the minor works of major writers. (And of the living ones, Murakami is one of the most major we have.) Of course, the works have to be gems;and this short novel, like Chronicle of a Death Foretold or The Turn of the Screw, is certainly that. It’s a love story of sorts, set in a materially comfortable but spiritually lonely modern Japan of glassy offices, wearying commuter trains, and smoky bars. With the possible exception of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, I’ve never known a book that so perfectly captures that sublime romantic bittersweet mood sought after by countless late-night jazz musicians and films like Casablanca.”↗