Sputnik Sweetheart

By (author) Haruki Murakami; By (author) Murakami, Haruki; Translated by Gabriel Philip; Introduction by Murakami, Haruki
Short description/annotation:
Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.

Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her?
Description:

A mystery story about love, the cosmos and other fictional universes.

Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. Miu is glamorous and successful. Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.

Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.

Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished...

''Confirms Murakami as a master of his craft... Out of this world'' Time Out

Review quote:
Sputnik Sweetheart has touched me deeper and pushed me further than anything I''ve read in a long time
Review quote:
How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration
Review quote:
A beautiful novel, as light as a feather, and yet enduringly sad... a captivating book from one of the world''s most interesting authors
Review quote:
Murakami has been compared to everyone from Raymond Carver to Raymond Chandler - which should tell you only one thing: he''s unique
Review quote:
Confirms Murakami as a master of his craft... Out of this world
Review quote:
Grabs you from its opening lines. . . . [Murakami''s] never written anything more openly emotional.
Review quote:
Murakami is a genius.
Review quote:
Murakami has an unmatched gift for turning psychological metaphors into uncanny narratives. -
Review quote:
An agonizing, sweet story about the power and the pain of love. . . . Immensely deepened by perfect little images that leave much to be filled in by the reader''s heart or eye.
Review quote:
[Murakami belongs] in the topmost rank of writers of international stature.
Biographical note:
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers'' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, First Person Singular and The City and Its Uncertain Walls Murakami''s distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world''s most acclaimed and well-loved writers. Philip Gabriel has translated many novels and short stories by Haruki Murakami and other modern Japanese writers. He is a recipient of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, and the 2006 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Kafka on the Shore. Other acclaimed translations by Philip Gabriel include Lonely Castle in the Mirror and The Travelling Cat Chronicles
Promotional headline:
A mystery sto