“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” is a novel published in 1994–1995 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, an international bestselling author known for groundbreaking novels such as “1Q84” and “Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.”

The protagonist-narrator is Toru Okada, an unassuming, unemployed man in his early thirties who has no ambition. When he and his wife Kumiko’s cat disappears, his wife tells him to consult a pair of clairvoyant sisters named Malta and Creta Kano.

While looking for his lost cat, Toru meets May Kasahara, a 16 year old girl in the neighborhood who was obsessed with death. He began to spend his days chatting with May, sucking on lemon drops and looking for his lost cat. Sometimes, May would take along Toru to help her with her job: tallying up people with some degree of baldness at a subway line for a wig company.

But Toru’s life began to spin out of orbit when one day, his wife left for work and never came back. His life is interrupted at several points by characters who have incredibly unbelievable stories of their own.

Stories that are interwoven include a Japanese soldier’s horrific experiences in Outer Mongolia during World War II. This war story is then followed by another account, about a soldier posted in Hsin-ching, the Japanese occupied capital of Manchuria, who was ordered to kill all the animals in the zoo to prevent them from escaping during the crossfire.

Other characters include Toru’s brother-in-law, a demonic politician with a rising career, and a rich woman with a particular taste for neatness and clothing.

This novel touches upon several philosophical as well as historical topics such as the silent suffocation of a dying marriage, the underlying evil behind politics and Japan’s violent history in World War II.

The characters Murakami created are bristling with imagination and originality. The novel weaves in and out of illusion and reality, until the reader is eventually unable to tell them apart.

“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” is a breathtaking, uncopiable novel, unpredictable with every page and every chapter.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to break out of their reading comfort zone and to experience something completely new and revolutionary in terms of characters, plot and the meaning of life, love and death beneath it all.