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Originally Posted by giannifive
It's called "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" on my copy. I just got it for a gift and I can't wait to read it. People claim it's his masterpiece.
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That's a very inappropriate title. Sounds like a bird-shaped machine that is getting wound up. The bird is supposed to be a "real bird" that winds the screws of the world. I know "Nejimakidori kuronikuru" is kind of a hard title to translate, but "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is just plain wrong.
I've also heard that it's his "masterpiece." It was good, but not a masterpiece by far. It seems like Murakami himself doesn't know where he's going with the story at many times. There was one time, near the end of the first book, where the main character goes off into this long story about when this old guy went to Mongolia during World War II and I was thinking "what the hell does this have to do with anything?" He manages to tie everything together, but a lot of it seemed forced to me. Like he thought up an idea to tie it together AFTER writing something. Also, he'd have an interesting thing going on, then the chapter ends and the next two chapters are long 40-60 pages of completely unrelated stuff. And at the end of the book, he leaves you wondering what the hell he meant by a lot of the stuff in the novel. I doubt he knows half of the unanswered questions himself. Like, why... I shouldn't go into it since you haven't read it. I hope it's a good translation because a bad translation can ruin a great book. One reason why I never read Japanese novels in English. I have read good translations and bad translations before. I read "Kitchen" by Yoshimoto Banana 2 years ago and someone asked me to compare it to the English translation and it made me so glad I DIDN'T read the English and had read the original Japanese instead.
Back to the subject at hand, I liked the book, but I wouldn't call it his "masterpiece" by far. A friend of mine who is a Murakami Haruki fan said that "Sputnik no koibito" is his best work. But that might just be his opinion.