![]() ![]() He always felt rather blank, devoid of personality in comparison with the colorful others now this feeling consumes him. ![]() ![]() Tsukuru Tazaki has been brutally expelled, without explanation, from the close-knit circle of friends that had been his entire world. He offers instead a down-to-earth examination of isolation and intimacy so elementary that it feels more like minimalist art than the complex, wind-up creations he usually produces. But here the author strips away the magical quavers of reality and the mind-bending plot structures that have become hallmarks of his work. Like most of his work, from the cyberpunk-fantasy-detective hybrid "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" to the unwieldy and otherworldly three-volume marathon "1Q84," this new novel chronicles a spiritual quest that might also be a love story. Murakami has won international audiences and prizes by writing a kind of shamanistic science fiction of everyday life. The pilgrimage makes a fine metaphor for its hero's journey, but perhaps an even better one for the author's. ![]() The "pilgrimage" of Haruki Murakami's latest novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage," translates literally as a "reverent perambulation." In this traditional Japanese practice, one dons white robes symbolic of ascetic simplicity, leaves excess baggage behind and gives oneself over to the rhythms and vicissitudes of travel. ![]()
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