Murakami reveals in the introduction that he started writing his first novel in English rather than Japanese and the limitations imposed by writing in a foreign language partially explain how this fragmented style developed. It is a very sketchy outline of the thoughts of an unnamed narrator, a student who spends a lot of time in J’s bar with the Rat, and his feelings about previous relationships. The only real connection between the three books is the presence of the same unnamed narrator along with his friend known as the Rat. Although both ‘Hear the Wind Sing’ and ‘Pinball 1973’ have the barest of “plots” consisting of an aimless series of bizarre events and random musings, ‘Hear the Wind Sing’ is particularly disjointed. However, in the case of Murakami’s earliest works, it makes virtually no difference which order you read them in due to the total absence of a linear plot. I can’t think of any other series where it would be even remotely conceivable to translate the final book of a trilogy as a stand-alone novel a quarter of a century before making the first two volumes available outside Japan. ‘Hear the Wind Sing’ and ‘Pinball 1973’ are actually the first two parts of a “trilogy” while the third part ‘A Wild Sheep Chase’ has already been widely available in English since 1989. Last year, new translations by Ted Goossen were finally made available in one volume under the shortened title ‘Wind/Pinball’. Despite Murakami’s cult status followed by increasing commercial success across the world and with rare copies of the original translations selling for hundreds of pounds on eBay, it’s surprising that the novellas haven’t been reissued sooner. Originally published in Japan in 19 respectively, the English translations by Alfred Birnbaum have long been out of print. Shortly after ‘ Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage‘ was published in 2014, it was announced that Haruki Murakami’s first two novellas ‘Hear the Wind Sing’ and ‘Pinball, 1973’ would be retranslated and reissued in English.

The little green monster murakami