Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami is a prolific writer of postmodern literature known mostly for his unreal, humorous work focusing on the loneliness and empty-mindedness of Japan's work-dominated generation. He was referred to as one of the world’s greatest living novelists by The Guardian.

Norwegian Wood, a book that made Murakami something of a superstar, is a nostalgic story of loss and is a Bildungsroman of sorts. The title is taken from the Beatles song, "Norwegian Wood", the book is told from the first-person perspective of Toru Watanabe, who reminisces on his college days in Tokyo. The then 20-year-old college student is shown to love two girls. One, Naoko, is a childhood friend living in a rehabilitation center. The other, Midori, is a fellow university student whose liveliness makes her the anti-Naoko. Midori wears short skirts, talks frankly about sex, and unapologetically believes in love. Both of them stand for two different approaches to the world and to life itself. Midori, with her short skirts, impulsive behavior, and general effervescence, represents the life-affirming bright side. Naoko, with her absorption in her former boyfriend's suicide, plus her psychological problems, is the dark side, even the imminent presence of death itself, forever waiting in the wings.

The book is loved widely among young readers because Murakami writes about detachment, individualism, romance, and loneliness - and does so in clean, simple prose with occasional poetic bursts of surprising power. One of the assumptions regularly made about the book is that it tells the story of Murakami's student days when he first came to Tokyo. However, he has denied this hypothesis and made the following comment on the same, "I borrowed the details of the protagonist's college environment and daily life from my college days. As a result, many people think it is an autobiographical novel, but it is not autobiographical at all. My youth was far less dramatic, far more boring than his. If I had simply written the literal truth of my own life, the novel would have been no more than 15 pages long."

Norwegian Wood has all the ingredients to make a good book, a beautiful and enchanting story, good music, and a group of compelling characters. It is indeed the kind of book that makes us think about life, our youth, the friends we won and lost, being easy to relate the characters with our friends (at least in my case) and for that and much more, in my humble opinion, a life-changing book.

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