'Norwegian Wood'
Author: Haruki Murakami
Translation: Charles Flores
Publisher: Horizons / 2023
Pages: 371
The author of this book, Haruki Murakami, is a Japanese author whose novels, essays and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan and internationally, with his writings translated into 50 languages and millions of copies sold.
His work ranges from science fiction to fantasy to crime fiction.
He was born in Kyoto during the post-World War II baby boom and was raised up in Kobe, as an only child. His father was the son of a Buddhist priest who was involved in the Second Sino-Japanese War and was deeply traumatised by it. His mother was the daughter of an Osaka merchant. Both taught Japanese literature.
Since childhood, Murakami has been influenced by Western culture, far more than his contemporary writers.
His first job was at a record store. Then, together with his wife he opened a coffee house and jazz bar. Both these experiences are reflected in the book being reviewed today.
Murakami is also an experienced marathon and triathlon enthusiast.
He began writing fiction when he was 29. He got his inspiration for his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing (1979) while watching a baseball game and he wrote it over 10 months at night after finishing work at the bar.
He won first prize for that and was encouraged to write a sequel, Pinball (1973) followed by A Wild Sheep Chase.
In 1985, Murakami wrote Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a dreamlike fantasy. But it was only with the book being reviewed today, Norwegian Wood, that he achieved national and international recognition, selling millions of copies.
This was followed by The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995) which deals in part with the difficult topic of war crimes in Manchukuo, China. After the Kobe earthquake and the Aum Shinrikyo gas attack he wrote the non-fiction Underground, a series of interviews with the victims of the gas attack, and the short story collection After the Quake.
Sputnik Sweetheart was first published in 1999, followed by Kafka on the Shore in 2002. After further writings and controversies such as when his books were banned in China and Killing Commendatore (2017), a historical fiction that caused controversy in Hong Kong, his most recent novel is The City and its Uncertain Walls, his first novel in six years, 1,200 pages long.
The book being reviewed today is a nostalgic story of loss and incipient sexuality. It is told from the first-person perspective of Toru Watanabe who looks back on his days as a college student living in Tokyo.
It depicts depression, suicide and the sense of grief born from loss. However, at the end it delivers a positive message: even though we may be lost, we can continue to live as long as we try.
Toru meets and interacts with Naoko and then Midori and describes their various coping mechanisms to deal with the losses in their lives. Toru is a quiet and serious young student who is devoted to the beautiful and introspective Naoko but their mutual passion is marked by the death of their best friend.
Toru begins to adapt to the stresses of student life but Naoko finds the pressures unbearable and retreats further into her own world. Toru finds himself reaching out to others and is drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman, Midori.
There is also the rather shadowy figure of Naoko's friend and mentor, Reiko, who also has a story to tell.
I had already had the opportunity to review another translation by Charles Flores, the hauntingly beautiful Kwarantina by Jim Crace.
Apart from these two works, there is a quite substantial corpus from the Flores pen, from poetry to short stories in Maltese to poetry in English and prose works in English too.
This translation is quite smooth, even though it is a translation from an English translation of the original Japanese. The translator has a mastery of Maltese that should be the envy of many.