While Japanese author Haruki Murakami's status has grown exponentially since the publication of his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, in 1979, parts of his catalogue have been frustratingly out of reach to the English-speaking world. Wind and its sequel of sorts, Pinball, 1973, were never widely available in the United States, although they serve as the first two parts of the Trilogy of the Rat, which culminates in the novel A Wild Sheep Chase.
Knopf offers both together now in one slim volume, Wind/Pinball, translated by Ted Goossen, giving fans the chance to discover the literary giant when he was finding his voice. Both books are narrated by an unnamed male in his 20s (it may be same narrator both times, but that's never clear), and populated by recurring characters J, a bartender, and the Rat, a rich, washed-out young man with unbearable ennui.
Neither book has much in the way of plot. Instead, both novels move from image to image, revealing the narrator's proclivities and the Rat's descent into depression. Murakami's famous spare style is already fully formed, though it's not clear that he understands yet how to tell a story over more than a few pages, since his focus jumps almost at random. Readers hoping for an experience similar to Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki or his masterpiece, A Wind Up Bird Chronicle, may or may not be disappointed, depending on what they're after when they read Murakami. As disjointed as these two short novels are, they capture the same strange, forceful mood of his later works. --Noah Cruickshank, marketing manager, Open Books, Chicago, Ill.