A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel [Paperback]

Quirky and utterly captivating,A Wild Sheep Chaseis Murakami at his astounding best.

An advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend and casually appropriates the image for an advertisement. What he doesn’t realize is that included in the scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes readers from Tokyo to the remote mountains of northern Japan, where the unnamed protagonist has a surprising confrontation with his demons.“Murakami is a mythmaker for the millennium, a wiseacre wiseman.” –New York Times Book Review

"A delight . . . equal parts screwball comedy, detective story, and heroic quest." –USA Today

“A witty adventure . . . a piece of verbal anarchy . . . a labyrinthine mystery from start to finish.” –San Francisco Chronicle

"Marvelously engaging, at turns witty, dry, wicked, even loopy. ReadingA Wild Sheep Chaseis like spending a splendidly foul weekend with the Four Raymonds–Chandler, Carver, Massey, and Queneau."–Frederick BarthelmeBorn in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949, Haruki Murakami grew up in Kobe and now lives near Tokyo. The most recent of his many honors is the Yomiuri Literary Prize, whose previous recipients include Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Kobo Abe. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages.Part One
November 25, 1970

1
Wednesday Afternoon Picnic

It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition. A friend rang me up and read it to me. Nothing special. Something a rookie reporter fresh out of college might've written for practice.

The date, a street corner, a person driving a truck, a pedestrian, a casualty, an investigation of possil"