Murakami writes of contemporary Japan, urban alienation and journeys of self-discovery, and in this book he combines recollections of the war with metaphysics, dreams and hallucinations into a powerful and impressionistic work.

Toru Okada's cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life - spent cooking,reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table - are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.

Book One:The Thieving Magpie

 June and July 1984

1 Tuesday's Wind-up Bird

 Six Fingers and Four Breasts

2 Full Moon and Eclipse of the Sun

 On Horses Dying in the Stables

 Malta Kano's Hat

 Sherbet Tone and Allen Ginsberg

 and the Crusaders

4 High Towers and Deep Wells

 (Or, Far from Nomonhan)

5 Hooked on Lemon Drops

 Flightless Bird and Waterless Well

6 On the Births of Kumiko Okada

 and Noboru Wataya

7 The Happy Cleaners

 And Creta Kano Makes Her Entrance

8 Creta Kano's Long Story

 An Inquiry into the Nature of Pain

 Culverts and an Absolute

 Insufficiency of Electricity

 May Kasahara's Inquiry into

 the Nature of Hairpieces

l0 Magic Touch

 Death in the Bathtub

 Messenger with Keepsakes

11 Enter Lieutenant Mamiya

 What Came from the Warm Mud

 Eau de Cologne

12 Lieutenant Mamiya's Long Story: Part I

13 Lieutenant Mamiya's Long Story: Part II

Book Two: Bird as Prophet

 July to October 1984

1 As Concrete as Possible

 Appetite in Literature

2 No Good News in This Chapter

3 Noboru Wataya Speaks

 The Story of the Monkeys of the Shitty Island

4 Divine Grace Lost

 Prostitute of the Mind

5 Views of Distant Towns

 Eternal Half-Moon

 Ladder in Place

6 Inheriting Property

 Inquiry on Jellyfish

 Something Like a Sense of Detachment

7 Recollections and Dialogue on Pregnancy

 Empirical Inquiry on Pain

8 The Root of Desire

 In Room 208

 Passing Through the Wall

9 The Well and Stars

 How the Ladder Disappeared

10 May Kasahara on Death and Evolution

 The Thing Made Elsewhere

11 Hunger as Pain

 Kumiko's Long Letter

 Bird as Prophet

12 Discovered When Shaving

 Discovered When Waking

13 Creta Kano's Story Continued

14 Creta Kano's New Departure

15 The Only Bad Thing That Ever Happened

 in May Kasahara's House

 May Kasahara on the Gooshy Source of Heat

16 The Simplest Thing

 Revenge in a Sophisticated Form

 The Thing in the Guitar Case

Book Three: The Birdcatcher

 October 1984 to December 1985

 The Wind-up Bird in Winter

 Waking from Hibernation

 One More Name Card

 The Namelessness of Money

3 What Happened in the Night

4 Buying New Shoes

 The Thing That Came Back Home

 A Place You Can Figure Out

 If You Think About It Really, Really Hard

 (May Kasahara's Point of View: 1)

6 Nutmeg and Cinnamon

7 The Mystery of the Hanging House

8 Down in the Well

9 The Zoo Attack

 (or, A Clumsy Massacre)

10 So, Then, the Next Problem

 (May Kasahara's Point of View: 2)

11 Is This Shovel a Real Shovel？

 (What Happened in the Night: 2)

12 M's Secret Cure

13 The Waiting, Man

 What Couldn't Be Shaken Off

 No Man Is an Island

14 Cinnamon's Strange Sign Language

 The Musical Offering

15 This Could Be the End of the Line

 (May Kasahara's Point of View: 3)

16 The World's Exhaustion and Burdens

 The Magic Lamp

17 The Fitting Room

 A Successor

18 A Stupid Tree Frog Daughter

 (May Kasahara's Point of View: 4)

19 The Subterranean Labyrinth

 Cinnamon's Two Doors

20 Nutmeg's Story

21 The Mystery of the Hanging House: 2

22 Jellyfish from All Around the World

 Things Metamorphosed

23 Counting Sheep

 The Thing in the Centre of the Circle

24 The Signal Turns Red

 The Long Arm Reaches Out

25 Triangular Ears

 Sleigh Bells

26 The Wind-up Bird Chronicle No. 8

 (or, A Second Clumsy Massacre)

27 Cinnamon's Missing Links

28 You Just Can't Trust a House

 (May Kasahara's Point of View: 5)

29 A Vacant House Is Born

30 Malta Kano's Tall

 Boris the Manskinner

31 The Bat Vanishes

 The Thieving Magpie Returns

32 The Job of Making Others Use Their Imaginations

 (The Story of Boris the Manskinner, Continued)

33 A Dangerous Place

 The People Watching Television

 The Hollow Man

34 The Light of a Firefly

 Breaking the Spell

 A World Where Alarm Clocks Ring in the Morning

35 Just a Real Knife

 The Thing That Had Been Prophesied

36 The Story of the Duck People

 Shadows and Tears

 (May Kasahara's Point of View: 6)

37 Two Different Kinds of News

 The Thing That Disappeared

38 The Wind-up Bird Chronicle No. 17

 (Kumiko's Letter)

39 Goodbye

Works Consulted