The haunting enigmatic love story that turned Murakami into a literary superstar in Japan and
is his bestselling title throughout the world Autumn 1969 and soon I would be 20. When he
hears her favourite Beatles song Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko the girlfriend of
his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student
days in Tokyo adrift in a world of uneasy friendships casual sex passion loss and desire -
to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to
choose between the future and the past. 'Such is the exquisite gossamer construction of
Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility'
Guardian 'Poignant romantic and hopeless it beautifully encapsulates the heartbreak and
loss of faith' Sunday Times 'A masterly novel' New York Times
