The wind-up bird chronicle
(Book)

"Originally published in Japan in three separate volumes as Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru by Shinchosa Ltd., Tokyo in 1994 and 1995. This translation originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1997"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references.

Having quit his job, Toru Okada is enjoying a pleasant stint as a "house husband", listening to music and arranging the dry cleaning and doing the cooking - until his cat goes missing, his wife becomes distant and begins acting strangely, and he starts meeting enigmatic people with fantastic life stories. They involve him in a world of psychics, shared dreams, out-of-body experiences, and shaman-like powers, and tell him stories from Japan's war in Manchuria, about espionage on the border with Mongolia, the battle of Nomonhan, the killing of the animals in Hsin-ching's zoo, and the fate of Japanese prisoners-of-war in the Soviet camps in Siberia