Two Novels

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami’s two first novel - here they are together in one edition.

Now I think it’s time to tell my story.

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami’s two first novels. Home from college on his summer break, the narrator spends his time drinking beer and smoking with his friend nicknamed the Rat, listening to the radio, thinking about writing and pursuing a relationship with a girl with nine fingers. Three years later he has moved to Tokyo to work as a translator and live with indistinguishable twin girls. But the Rat has remained behind. Haunted by memories of the past, the narrator embarks upon a quest to find the exact model of pinball machine he and the Rat had enjoyed playing years earlier: the three-flipper Spaceship.

‘Quintessential Murakami…an excellent introduction to a writer who has since become one of the most influential novelists of his generation’ Guardian

‘Murakami’s way of making emotionally resonant images and symbols bump around on the page, and in one’s mind, remains fresh’ Evening Standard

'I was so taken with its atmosphere that I read and reread it' Patti Smith

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR