Wild Sheep Chase
A marvelous hybrid of mythology and mystery, A Wild Sheep Chase""is the extraordinary literary thriller that launched Haruki Murakami's international reputation. It begins simply enough: A twenty-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend, and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company's advertisement. What he doesn't realize is that included in the pastoral 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 in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our hero from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan, where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself. Quirky and utterly captivating, A Wild Sheep Chase is Murakami at his astounding best.
Stats for nerds
17recommend
24mentions
21people
2015–2025years
79% recommend21% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Murakami’s fiction novels are extremely different from “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”. If you want to try another non-fiction book of his check-out “Underground : The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche”, I loved it. If you go the fiction route “Kafka on the Shore” and “A Wild Sheep Chase” are a good starting point. Avoid some of his longer works unless you enjoy his style.
- Don't overlook the earlier books like Norwegian Wood, Wild Sheep Chase, and The Elephant Vanishes. Easier reading than the thick books and fun and beautiful.
- Dance, Dance, Dance which is a “sequel” to Wild Sheep Chase is my favorite, followed by WUNC and then HBW/EOW.
Total aside but has anyone found good Murakami-esque movies or TV Shows? Parts of The Leftovers actually gave me the same feeling, especially “International Assassin” and the surrounding episodes but am happy to hear others.
- A Wild Sheep Chase was the first present I bought my wife when we were dating. Great book.
- "Representative" isn't "best". Try Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World or Norwegian Wood. Men without Women feels like the best short stories to start with.
Then Wild Sheep Chase, then you've read enough for 1q84.
- I feel Murakami's earlier work was more natural and didn't try too hard. Not all was great, but his best work for me is Wild Sheep Chase. After The Wind Up Bird, he is mostly repeating himself. I don't see much depth in his works, at least in terms of "depth" how I would define it. Murakami is about alot of ideas who are not always connected or go anywhere. It's fun for a while, but gets repetative.
