Novel
Norwegian Wood
ノルウェイの森
Haruki Murakami · 1987
Synopsis
Watanabe Tōru, thirty-seven, lands in Hamburg and hears an orchestral cover of the Beatles song that gives the book its title; he looks back on the end of the sixties. At school, his friend Kizuki took his own life on his seventeenth birthday, leaving Watanabe and Naoko, Kizuki's friend, face to face. In Tokyo they meet again and walk together for whole Sundays. Naoko soon leaves for a secluded rest home in the mountains near Kyoto, and Watanabe becomes close at university to Midori, a lively classmate, according to Universal Set.
Context
The author wrote it in Europe, in Rome according to Encyclopedia.com, and the book was published in 1987 by Kōdansha. It sold about two million copies in its first year according to Encyclopedia.com, and ten million in Japan in 2009 according to J-Cast, which says it was published in thirty-three languages. It made its author a national figure, besieged in public, who had left Japan in 1986. The Japanese title is the usual transcription of that of the song; “mori” means a forest.
Who it is for
A novel of medium length, told in the past tense by a narrator looking back on his student years.
Prizes and reception
Read by millions of young readers despite part of Japanese criticism, it was adapted for the screen in 2010 by Trần Anh Hùng.
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