Killing Commendatore

Description

An epic novel from the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

A thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist’s home and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors. A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art—as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby—Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers.NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A CBC BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A GOODREADS BEST FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR

“This 700-page novel promises more of Murakami’s magical mist, but its size, beauty and concerns with lust and war bring us back to the vividness and scale of his 1997 epic, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.” —The Boston Globe

“Exactly as lovely and strange as any Murakami fan would expect from the author.” —Bustle

“[An] overwhelmingly rich novel . . . spectacular in its trenchancy and range. . . . The novel will only burnish [Murakami’s] reputation, barely rivalled since the days of Dickens, as the living novelist who best combines literary excellence and commercial popularity.” —The Telegraph (UK)

“Immersive, repetitive, big-hearted. . . . Killing Commendatore gets the balance right. Perhaps this lies in its exhilarating portrayal of how it feels to make art. In long, powerful passages, Murakami describes painting with the intensity of what seems like just-concealed autobiography.” —The Washington Post

“The celebrated Japanese maverick keeps recombining his favourite idiosyncratic tropes to unexpectedly powerful effect. . . . Killing Commendatore is at times tense, creepy, absurdly funny, self-aware and baffling—and engrossing throughout.” —Maclean’s

“At first glance, Killing Commendatore . . . seems like a return to the surreal after several smaller, more intimate, realistic works. It’s not, though. And that blurring of the boundaries is one of the novel’s many strengths. . . . Killing Commendatore is strongest in its quiet moments, rewarding a slow immersion.” —Toronto Star

“Eccentric and intriguing, Killing Commendatore is the product of a singular imagination. . . . Murakami is a wiz at melding the mundane with the surreal. . . . He has a way of imbuing the supernatural with uncommon urgency. His placid narrative voice belies the utter strangeness of his plot. . . . The worldview of Murakami’s novels is consistent, and it’s invigorating. In this book and many that came before it, he urges us to embrace the unusual, accept the unpredictable.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Some novelists hold a mirror up to the world and some, like Haruki Murakami, use the mirror as a portal to a universe hidden beyond it. . . . He builds his self-contained world deliberately and faithfully, developing intrigue and suspense and even taking care to give each chapter a cliffhanger ending as in an old-fashioned serialized novel. . . . When you’re under Mr. Murakami’s trance you’re likely to keep flipping the pages.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Many of these themes are familiar in Murakami’s work, but he continues to explore them with phenomenal energy and verve. And humour. What makes his voice so distinctive, and so captivating, is the mix of precise observation, clarity and deadpan humour. When it all seems to be going a bit too far, a flash of wit will remind us that this is a game, and we have been invited to play it. . . . Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked.” —The Times (UK)

“Murakami is happy to exist in a state of flux. . . . His pace remains easy and unhurried. His prose is warm, conversational and studded with quiet profundities. He’s eminently good company; that most precious of qualities we look for in an author. We trust him to get us entertainingly lost, just as we trust that he’ll eventually get us home.” —The Guardian (UK)

“[Killing Commendatore] marks the return of a master.” —Esquire

“Murakami returns with a sprawling epic of art, dislocation and secrets.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Again and again, the author of 1Q84 has delivered vast, complicated and engrossing narratives that bind together in unpredictable ways that are absolutely worth the wait. . . . The story of a painter’s discovery of a lost work of art builds to a superb puzzle of monumental philosophical and emotional depth.” —BookPage

“Murakami’s [Killing Commendatore] is a meticulous yet gripping novel whose escalating surreal tone complements the author’s tight focus on the domestic and the mundane. . . . Murakami’s sense of humor helps balance the otherworldly and the prosaic, making this a consistently rewarding novel.” —Publishers Weekly

“[Killing Commendatore] is a perfect balance of tradition and individual talent. . . . Murakami dancing along ‘the inky blackness of the Path of Metaphor’ is like Fred Astaire dancing across a floor, then up the walls and onto the ceiling. No other writer so commands that manner of storytelling wrought from a stream of rich ideas.” —The Spectator (UK)

“Murakami’s free-form eclecticism scrambles distinctions between pop and high culture. His riffs mash up sensationalism and sublimity; the banal and bizarre. . . . No other author mixes domestic, fantastic and esoteric elements into such weirdly bewitching shades. Murakami’s ‘Land of Metaphor’ remains a country where wonders never cease.” —The Financial Times (UK)
HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honours is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera and V. S. Naipaul.Prologue

Today when I awoke from a nap the faceless man was there before me. He was seated on the chair across from the sofa I’d been sleeping on, staring straight at me with a pair of imaginary eyes in a face that wasn’t.

The man was tall, and he was dressed the same as when I had seen him last. His face-that-wasn’t-a-face was half hidden by a wide-brimmed black hat, and he had on a long, equally dark coat.

***

“I came here so you could draw my portrait,” the faceless man said, after he’d made sure I was fully awake. His voice was low, toneless, flat. “You promised you would. You remember?”

“Yes, I remember. But I couldn’t draw it then because I didn’t have any paper,” I said. My voice, too, was toneless and flat. “So to make up for it I gave you a little penguin charm.”

“Yes, I brought it with me,” he said, and held out his right hand. In his hand—which was extremely long—he held a small plastic penguin, the kind you often see attached to a cell phone strap as a good-luck charm. He dropped it on top of the glass coffee table, where it landed with a small clunk.

“I’m returning this. You probably need it. This little penguin will be the charm that should protect those you love. In exchange, I want you to draw my portrait.”

I was perplexed. “I get it, but I’ve never drawn a portrait of a person without a face.”

My throat was parched.

“From what I hear, you’re an outstanding portrait artist. And there’s a first time for everything,” the faceless man said. And then he laughed. At least, I think he did. That laugh-like voice was like the empty sound of wind blowing up from deep inside a cavern.

He took off the hat that hid half of his face. Where the face should have been, there was nothing, just the slow whirl of a fog.

I stood up and retrieved a sketchbook and a soft pencil from my studio. I sat back down on the sofa, ready to draw a portrait of the man with no face. But I had no idea where to begin, or how to get started. There was only a void, and how are you supposed to give form to something that does not exist? And the milky fog that surrounded the void was continually changing shape.

“You’d better hurry,” the faceless man said. “I can’t stay here forlong.”

My heart was beating dully inside my chest. I didn’t have much time. I had to hurry. But my fingers holding the pencil just hung there in midair, immobilized. It was as though everything from my wrist down into my hand were numb. There were several people I had to protect, and all I was able to do was draw pictures. Even so, there was no way I could draw him. I stared at the whirling fog. “I’m sorry, but your time’s up,” the man without a face said a little while later. From his faceless mouth, he let out a deep breath, like pale fog hovering over a river.

“Please wait. If you give me just a little more time—”

The man put his black hat back on, once again hiding half of his face.“One day I’ll visit you again. Maybe by then you’ll be able to draw me. Until then, I’ll keep this penguin charm.”

***

Then he vanished. Like a mist suddenly blown away by a freshening breeze, he vanished into thin air. All that remained was the unoccupied chair and the glass table. The penguin charm was gone from the tabletop.

It all seemed like a short dream. But I knew very well that it wasn’t. If this was a dream, then the world I’m living in itself must all be a dream.

***

Maybe someday I’ll be able to draw a portrait of nothingness. Just like another artist was able to complete a painting titled Killing Commendatore. But to do so I would need time to get to that point. I would have to have time on my side.CA

Additional information

Weight	18.8 oz
Dimensions	1.2100 × 5.2100 × 8.0100 in
Imprint	Anchor Canada
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09780385690713
ISBN-10	0385690711
Author	Haruki Murakami
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC061000, FIC014000
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