A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (Trilogy of the Rat Book 3) by Haruki Murakami (EPUB)

Description

A New York Times bestselling author—and “a mythmaker for the millennium, a wiseacre wiseman” (New York Times Book Review)—delivers a surreal and elaborate quest that takes readers from Tokyo to the remote mountains of northern Japan, where the unnamed protagonist has a surprising confrontation with his demons. An advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend and casually appropriates the image for an advertisement. What he doesn’t realize is that included in the scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I found this to be a clearly-written book of astonishing and fascinating imagination. I couldn’t put it down. Murikami’s amazing, as is his interpreter. An inventive story that captures and holds your attention.

⭐Reading Murakami is like falling into a waking dream, sideways. Or watching the slanting orange sunlight during the waning days of autumn, the cool blue rays on the periphery just outside your reach. It’s a field of fertile thought, a radiant garden; the pollinating, winged creatures absorb the nectar of its flowers, their fecundity extending the garden from the earth to the air, visibly and ethereally. Murakami’s surreal prose invites the reader into a wonderland of quirky motifs and recurring themes; the iteration of symbols–sheep, landscape, and isolation, to name a few– and the concentration on the minutiae of the protagonist’s life–smoking, drinking a beer, listening to music, eating and cooking–ushers the reader into labyrinthine connections with the story.We open with the narrator, a joint owner of a translation and advert business in Tokyo, an imperturbable young man who appears almost anhedonic, but perhaps he is embracing a devotion to mediocrity, a concept explored with some regard. He clearly embraces his girlfriend, who isn’t beautiful, but has a sixth sense about the future and exceptional ears that foment his carnal desires. At intervals, he ruminates on his failed past marriage with a gestalt acceptance.A strange man in a black suit sends the narrator on a wild goose chase–actually, a portentous wild sheep chase, to locate a single and singular sheep with a star on its back. (The paperback edition has an apt picture of the titular sheep.) It is an offer the young man can’t refuse, as it is consigned to a dire but obscure ultimatum. He accepts the challenge, liberates himself from employment, colleagues, and material matters, and leaves with his girlfriend, headed to the punishing, mountainous landscape of Hokkaido.This is the first Murakami novel (1982) translated into English, and it helps to know that it is the third novel in his TRILOGY OF THE RAT (the other two books not translated at this time); when the Rat character is introduced in the story, the reader senses a historical connection, a pull to the past–not just the protagonist’s, but the story’s. In Asian culture, the rat is a vehicle of the Hindu god Ganesh, unlike the unfavorable associations in Western culture. Moreover, sheep symbolism is linked to pastoral and idyllic imagery, as well as being sacrificial animals in many religions.Although not as fully realized as Murakami’s later

⭐and

⭐, it shares the elastic nature of time, the cultural implications of Japanese imperialist expansion, and the encroachment of Westernization. His postmodern expression of war crimes and corruption are both artfully enigmatic and representational, i.e. he fuses the corporeal with myth and fantasy, so that the reader experiences a rarefied adventure laden with figurative images–images that seem initially obtuse, but as the narrative progresses, unfold into the heart of humanity.The purity and beauty of the writing engages the willing reader into the thematic core of emptiness, loneliness, and alienation. Optimism? Cynicism? Pessimism? Yes, and it is left to the reader to interpret the many philosophical threads. Just lay back and let the words wend through you, and the story will inevitably penetrate the many layers of your consciousness. At the end, my mind and even my body felt like a conduit of Murakami’s prose.Many kudos to Alfred Birnbaum, whose translation into English is exemplary.

⭐Bottom Line First:Murakami is not for those who want the usual in their story telling. Much of the story line is very conventional. A somewhat disaffected, somewhat successful Ad man is dealing with divorce and the dislocations from his youth that happens in the modern world. Suddenly he enters a world of super powerful, threatening men who coerce him into quest for, not the Golden Fleece, but the living sheep with a star on its back. This is very early Murakami. It lacks some of the higher polish of his later works but is free of almost all of his more recent conventions. This makes for an easier read and a more direct story line. Because I have come to admire this writer, I recommend it as a good place to start a reading relationship with a master teller of oddball stories.I first came into contact with Haruki Murakami via his book

⭐. This is a great novel, but I later found that it was based on conventions he had developed several books earlier. My admiration was reduced by the thought that the latter book was not as inventive as I had originally believed.What I should have done, and recommend to others is that you attempt to read his books in order This was difficult to do because he had been reluctant to authorize English editions of his early works. A Wild Sheep Chase is the third book of his Trilogy of the Rat. It was the first that I was easily able to acquire. The good news is that books one and two are now available in one buy:

⭐. Hear the Wind Song is also his first book. So win/win.It is tricky to define what kind of books Murakami writes. The simple answer is fiction. His fiction tends to include traditional Japanese elements. There is a Spirit world, not always friendly to humans but not evil. As in other Murakami books there are references to a jazz club. (Murakami began his working life managing a jazz club. There are what will become common references to Western styles, food and music. There are parts that might be magic or science fiction and people can have extra real sensitivities.Our Central character, usually described as a Phillip Marlow matter of fact kind of person has as his girlfriend, a woman who is an ear model and is only beautiful when she exposes her ears. She is also capable of hearing signs and portents.This being the end of the trilogy, there are references to a number of characters that we have to accept absent a deep understanding of why they matter to our sheep chaser. However, the book works well as a standalone.A Wild Sheep Chase was for me a change to begin to see a fine story teller in hs early years. I will be going back again to get the rest of this trilogy. My recommendation to you is that Haruki Murakami weaves not just stories but a world. Murakami world is slightly removed from ours. It is a rich and complex world and worth your reading time.

⭐Although I didn’t read the first two installments of this series, the story doesn’t seem to require the background. The story is as cryptic as one might explicit from Haruki Murakami and therefore, completely delightful. Still not sure what lesson to take from the climax of the story.

⭐I returned because a friend lent it to me later. But just wanted to say that it’s a really good book.

⭐Our protagonist’s life has ground to his halt: his wife has divorced him after having an affair, his business is grinding to a halt as the friend with whom he founded it steadily succumbs to alcoholism, and his best friend Rat disappeared years ago – only occasionally sending bizarre, non-sequitur letters containing money or more recently a picture of some sheep.This picture becomes important, however, because it contains the image of a sheep with the mark of a star – a sheep that is of great interest to the shadowy right-wing organisation that have controlled Japan for years. An organisation that will pay him a great deal of money to find that sheep – or destroy him if he does not.Spurred on by his new girlfriend and her magical ears, this man with no motivation finds himself on a quest to find a single lost sheep on a mountainside in a country full of mountains. What he finds will make all that seem relatively normal.[MORE]What an exceptional book. To start off with it feels like a combination of the surreal humour of Douglas Adam’s Holistic Detective Agency combined with the magical reality of good Rushdie. But this is entirely its own creature. The translation is marvellous and the prose pure poetry – although the author seems to be obsessed with the main characters liquid consumption and expulsion! Plus, the smoking. Never has a book with so many cigarette breaks been so readable.I’m relatively new to Japanese literature – I’ve only read a dozen or so books (although naturally far more manga and all the Final Fantasy computer games!) – but there does seem to be a certain melancholy that keeps cropping up. Murakami makes the mundane interesting, the simple beautiful, and never lets the sadness drag the book down – far from it, I had to fight the temptation to skip to the last ten pages to find out how things worked out. But it is sad. Some things that are lost are never found. Some things that are found stay lost.This book does an exquisite job of showing sadness. I can’t wait to read more of his work.

⭐Reading Murakami is like falling into a dream, while being wide awake, holding a book in your hand! For people who are new to Murakami, they should know that this book is the second one, in a trilogy. The trilogy (which is actually called the ‘Rat Trilogy’), consists of below books in this order:#1 Wind/Pinball#2 A Wild Sheep Chase#3 Dance Dance Dance’A Wild Sheep Chase’ is a weird dream-like tale with a mix of detective story, myth, fantasy, and philosophy. The story opens with the protagonist, owner of a translation and advertising business in Tokyo, a young man who seems to be embracing mediocrity. He clearly embraces his girlfriend, who isn’t as beautiful, but has a sixth sense about the future and exceptional ears. At intervals, he reflects upon his failed past marriage too. A strange man in a black suit sends the narrator on a wild sheep chase, to locate a single and singular sheep with a star on its back. It is an offer the young man isn’t able to refuse. He accepts the challenge, gets rid of his employment, colleagues, and material matters, and leaves with his girlfriend, headed to the punishing, mountainous landscape of Hokkaido, in the search of ‘the sheep’. Rest of the story has many twists and turns, and also the mention of ‘Rat’ (from the previous novel). To know how the protagonist finds the sheep, and what happens once he finds the special sheep, pick up this book.The purity and beauty of the writing engage the reader into the core theme of emptiness, loneliness, and alienation. The actual detective story doesn’t get started until about halfway through, and pages are spent detailing random trips the guy makes to bars, and other things that don’t add much to the story.Anyway, as a Murakami fan, I liked the work. This may not be one of the best (if you compare it to something like ‘Kafka on the shore’), but definitely worth a read. I would rate it 4/5. Cheers!

⭐At the start of this book I would have recognised Murakami’s writing style instantly. It had been recommended to me by a Murakami fan and so I was eager to read it.The first, almost half of the book, did seem to plod along with little meaningful progress. It was almost like setting the scene for a movie, giving endless background and pointless sexploits that added nothing at all to the story. Then the Murakami magic sets in and it gets a reader’s mind working and drawn in. The imagery is good, the descriptions are first class and enable readers to picture precisely what Murakami is seeing as he wrote the text, but the story itself I found to be on the thin side. If anything, this was more like a great Murakami short story that had been stretched into a full-length novel.I won’t disappoint future readers by pointing out the several plot holes that are quite jarring by the time the book is finished, almost as if Murakami had wandered during his writing and just stopped before moving on to the next part. It really did need a little more explanation, a little more conclusive paragraphs before dropping one idea, for instance. The conclusion, though, was satisfying and it remained a good literary journey.Perhaps I was being too critical reading this book, perhaps I had noticed little things that other readers would not consider important or even necessary to explain/elaborate on. But, overall, I did enjoy the read and I did enjoy the journey the main character was taken on. However, for “real” Murakami literature laden with plot and sub-plots, imagery, surrealism, I still haven’t found a better novel than “Kafka On The Shore”. For someone wanting to know how good Murakamican be, I would recommend Kafka. For readers who want to simply enjoy a quite simply but nonetheless satisfying literary journey, then A Wild Sheep Chase is more than enough.Naturally I would recommend this book, it is by the wonderful Murakami after all, and the translation is excellent. He has though, written better.

⭐An interresting read however not quite as good as many of his other works. Sadly this is translated into American English which makes it very frustrating to read. A mixture of bad spelling and over simplified translations that make it painful to read at times. I will be avoiding any publishing companies bought out by Random House in the future.

⭐It was a good read although a little disappointed with this one.Characters were good and jogged along at a good pace.It didn’t really deliver for me.Worth a read though.

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