“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.” Volume 1: […]
Japanese literature
After the Quake
“The earth shook for precisely seventeen seconds. Exactly seventeen seconds—no more, no less.” UFO in Kushiro Komura’s wife leaves him after the Kobe earthquake, claiming he is “empty.” […]
Japanese literature
After Dark
“The clock hands move, but time does not.” Chapter 1: Midnight in Tokyo The novel opens in the late-night hours of Tokyo, where Mari Asai sits alone in […]
Japanese literature
Men Without Women
“No matter how far they travel, men without women are incomplete.” Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami is a collection of seven short stories exploring loneliness, love, and […]
Japanese literature
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
“I think I’m afraid of being truly happy. Because whenever I get too happy, something bad always happens.” Chapter 1: Tsukuru Tazaki’s Past Tsukuru Tazaki, a 36-year-old railway […]
Japanese literature
South of the Border, West of the Sun
“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it—to be fed so much love I […]
Japanese literature
Sputnik Sweetheart
“In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.” Chapter 1 The narrator, K, recounts his friendship with Sumire, […]
Japanese literature
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“The mind is a place of its own, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” Chapters 1-5: The Beginning of the Dual […]
Japanese literature
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“When the wind-up bird comes, the earth creaks, the wind blows, and time turns over.” Part 1: The Thieving Magpie The novel opens with Toru Okada, an unemployed […]
Japanese literature
1Q84
“It’s not that the world is full of mysteries. It’s just that we don’t know enough yet.” Book One (April–June) Aomame, a fitness instructor and assassin, exits a […]