Wind/ Pinball
Two Novels
Published on 3. July 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-1-5299-5774-7 (ISBN)
Description
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
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
Reviews / Votes
I was so taken with its atmosphere that I read and reread it -- Patti SmithMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
236 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5299-5774-7 (9781529957747)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2015
1st Edition
Vintage Digital
€8.99
Available for download
Persons
Haruki Murakami (Author)
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.
In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.
Ted Goossen (Translator)
Theodore (Ted) Goossen has translated the work of many Japanese writers, most notably Naoya Shiga, Haruki Murakami, and Hiromi Kawakami. He is the editor of The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories (1997) and the co-editor and founder, with Motoyuki Shibata, of the annual literary journal Monkey Business (now Monkey: new writing from Japan), which, since 2011, has introduced a new generation of Japanese writers to English-speaking readers. Essays and stories by, as well as interviews with, Murakami are a staple of every issue.
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.
In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.
Ted Goossen (Translator)
Theodore (Ted) Goossen has translated the work of many Japanese writers, most notably Naoya Shiga, Haruki Murakami, and Hiromi Kawakami. He is the editor of The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories (1997) and the co-editor and founder, with Motoyuki Shibata, of the annual literary journal Monkey Business (now Monkey: new writing from Japan), which, since 2011, has introduced a new generation of Japanese writers to English-speaking readers. Essays and stories by, as well as interviews with, Murakami are a staple of every issue.