Killing Commendatore
A Novel
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An epic novel from the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.
A thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist's home and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors. A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art--as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby--Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers.
About this Author
HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honours is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera and V. S. Naipaul.
Reviews
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A CBC BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A GOODREADS BEST FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
"This 700-page novel promises more of Murakami's magical mist, but its size, beauty and concerns with lust and war bring us back to the vividness and scale of his 1997 epic, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle." --The Boston Globe
"Exactly as lovely and strange as any Murakami fan would expect from the author." --Bustle
"[An] overwhelmingly rich novel . . . spectacular in its trenchancy and range. . . . The novel will only burnish [Murakami's] reputation, barely rivalled since the days of Dickens, as the living novelist who best combines literary excellence and commercial popularity." --The Telegraph (UK)
"Immersive, repetitive, big-hearted. . . . Killing Commendatore gets the balance right. Perhaps this lies in its exhilarating portrayal of how it feels to make art. In long, powerful passages, Murakami describes painting with the intensity of what seems like just-concealed autobiography." --The Washington Post
"The celebrated Japanese maverick keeps recombining his favourite idiosyncratic tropes to unexpectedly powerful effect. . . . Killing Commendatore is at times tense, creepy, absurdly funny, self-aware and baffling--and engrossing throughout." --Maclean's
"At first glance, Killing Commendatore . . . seems like a return to the surreal after several smaller, more intimate, realistic works. It's not, though. And that blurring of the boundaries is one of the novel's many strengths. . . . Killing Commendatore is strongest in its quiet moments, rewarding a slow immersion." --Toronto Star
"Eccentric and intriguing, Killing Commendatore is the product of a singular imagination. . . . Murakami is a wiz at melding the mundane with the surreal. . . . He has a way of imbuing the supernatural with uncommon urgency. His placid narrative voice belies the utter strangeness of his plot. . . . The worldview of Murakami's novels is consistent, and it's invigorating. In this book and many that came before it, he urges us to embrace the unusual, accept the unpredictable." --San Francisco Chronicle
"Some novelists hold a mirror up to the world and some, like Haruki Murakami, use the mirror as a portal to a universe hidden beyond it. . . . He builds his self-contained world deliberately and faithfully, developing intrigue and suspense and even taking care to give each chapter a cliffhanger ending as in an old-fashioned serialized novel. . . . When you're under Mr. Murakami's trance you're likely to keep flipping the pages." --The Wall Street Journal
"Many of these themes are familiar in Murakami's work, but he continues to explore them with phenomenal energy and verve. And humour. What makes his voice so distinctive, and so captivating, is the mix of precise observation, clarity and deadpan humour. When it all seems to be going a bit too far, a flash of wit will remind us that this is a game, and we have been invited to play it. . . . Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked." --The Times (UK)
"Murakami is happy to exist in a state of flux. . . . His pace remains easy and unhurried. His prose is warm, conversational and studded with quiet profundities. He's eminently good company; that most precious of qualities we look for in an author. We trust him to get us entertainingly lost, just as we trust that he'll eventually get us home." --The Guardian (UK)
"[Killing Commendatore] marks the return of a master." --Esquire
"Murakami returns with a sprawling epic of art, dislocation and secrets." --Kirkus Reviews
"Again and again, the author of 1Q84 has delivered vast, complicated and engrossing narratives that bind together in unpredictable ways that are absolutely worth the wait. . . . The story of a painter's discovery of a lost work of art builds to a superb puzzle of monumental philosophical and emotional depth." --BookPage
"Murakami's [Killing Commendatore] is a meticulous yet gripping novel whose escalating surreal tone complements the author's tight focus on the domestic and the mundane. . . . Murakami's sense of humor helps balance the otherworldly and the prosaic, making this a consistently rewarding novel." --Publishers Weekly
"[Killing Commendatore] is a perfect balance of tradition and individual talent. . . . Murakami dancing along 'the inky blackness of the Path of Metaphor' is like Fred Astaire dancing across a floor, then up the walls and onto the ceiling. No other writer so commands that manner of storytelling wrought from a stream of rich ideas." --The Spectator (UK)
"Murakami's free-form eclecticism scrambles distinctions between pop and high culture. His riffs mash up sensationalism and sublimity; the banal and bizarre. . . . 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." --The Financial Times (UK)
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