Killing Commendatore

By (author) Murakami, Haruki
Description:

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We all live our lives carrying secrets we cannot disclose.

''Beguiling... Murakami is brilliant at folding the humdrum alongside the supernatural; finding the magic that''s nested in life''s quotidian details'' Guardian

When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he holes up in the mountain home of a famous artist. The days drift by, spent painting, listening to music and drinking whiskey in the evenings. But then he discovers a strange painting in the attic and unintentionally begins a strange journey of self-discovery that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt and a haunted underworld.

A stunning work of imagination, Killing Commendatore is a surreal tale of love and loneliness, war and art.

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It’s safe to say that there’s no one like Murakami
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Murakami’s reality has many sides; some plain, some fancy. Translators Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen capture every colour on this mind-altering palette. No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades. Murakami’s “Land of Metaphor” remains a country where wonders never cease
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Wild, thrilling. . . Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked
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Expansive and intricate . . . touches on many of the themes familiar in Mr. Murakami’s novels: the mystery of romantic love, the weight of history, the transcendence of art, the search for elusive things just outside our grasp
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I found it totally gripping with scarcely a dull page, the loose ends enhancing its mystery. An absorbing work by a great writer
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An immersive big-hearted new novel
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Written in a simple, readable style that leaves you free to concentrate on the weirdness of the content… There is no other writer able to give us the fix that his unique qualities provide
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In this novel, [Murakami] captures the creative process compellingly… The complex landscape that Murakami assembles in Killing Commendatore is a word portrait of the artist’s inner life
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Murakami keeps the reader gripped
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Rich, sprawling… Killing Commendatore is a… powerful, sustained meditation on how we engage with works of art
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 and Men Without Women, 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.
Promotional headline:
The latest bewitching, kaleidoscopic novel from master storyteller Haruki Murakami, author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and 1Q84