First published 2021
A lonely man tells eight stories from different phases of his life. He remembers listening to Beatles albums in his youth, recalls relationships that slipped away, and reflects on moments when the ordinary world revealed something strange beneath its surface. In one story he encounters a confession from an unusual monkey in Shinagawa. In another he considers Charlie Parker's music while navigating the complexities of adult relationships. Sometimes the narrator seems to be Murakami himself, blurring the line between memory and invention. Each tale circles around the same themes that have always occupied this man: the women he has loved and lost, the music that shaped him, the way childhood recedes into something both precious and unreachable. The stories move between nostalgia and present-day bewilderment, always returning to the fundamental loneliness of being human.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century, asian-american
Vibes: emotional, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: blurred-lines, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Shinagawa
Period: Youth, Adulthood
245 pages · Hardcover · Knopf