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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Author Haruki Murakami
Read by Patrick Lawlor, Ellen Archer
$22.50 US
Audio | Random House Audio
On sale Sep 03, 2013 | 12 Hours and 40 Minutes | 978-0-8041-6663-8
Sales rights: US, Canada, Open Mkt
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From the surreal to the mundane, twenty-four stories that “show Murukami at his dynamic, organic best” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). 

"A warning to new readers of Haruki Murakami: You will become addicted.... His newest collection is as enigmatic and sublime as ever." —San Francisco Chronicle

Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit Murakami’s ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and entertaining.
  • WINNER | 2007
    Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize
  • SELECTION | 2007
    ALA Notable Book
Blind Willow, Sleeping WomanWhen I closed my eyes, the scent of the wind wafted up toward me. A May wind, swelling up like a piece of fruit, with a rough outer skin, slimy flesh, dozens of seeds. The flesh split open in midair, spraying seeds like gentle buckshot into the bare skin of my arms, leaving behind a faint trace of pain.“What time is it?” my cousin asked me. About eight inches shorter than me, he had to look up when he talked.I glanced at my watch. “Ten twenty.”“Does that watch tell good time?”“Yeah, I think so.”My cousin grabbed my wrist to look at the watch. His slim, smooth fingers were surprisingly strong. “Did it cost a lot?”“No, it’s pretty cheap,” I said, glancing again at the timetable.No response.My cousin looked confused. The white teeth between his parted lips looked like bones that had atrophied.“It’s pretty cheap,” I said, looking right at him, carefully repeating the words. “It’s pretty cheap, but it keeps good time.”My cousin nodded silently. My cousin can’t hear well out of his right ear. Soon after he went into elementary school he was hit by a baseball and it screwed up his hearing. That doesn’t keep him from functioning normally most of the time. He attends a regular school, leads an entirely normal life. In his classroom, he always sits in the front row, on the right, so he can keep his left ear toward the teacher. And his grades aren’t so bad. The thing is, though, he goes through periods when he can hear sounds pretty well, and periods when he can’t. It’s cyclical, like the tides. And sometimes, maybe twice a year, he can barely hear anything out of either ear. It’s like the silence in his right ear deepens to the point where it crushes out any sound on the left side. When that happens, ordinary life goes out the window and he has to take some time off from school. The doctors are basi- cally stumped. They’ve never seen a case like it, so there’s nothing they can do.“Just because a watch is expensive doesn’t mean it’s accurate,” my cousin said, as if trying to convince himself. “I used to have a pretty expensive watch, but it was always off. I got it when I started junior high, but I lost it a year later. Since then I’ve gone without a watch. They won’t buy me a new one.”“Must be tough to get along without one,” I said.“What?” he asked.“Isn’t it hard to get along without a watch?” I repeated, looking right at him.“No, it isn’t,” he replied, shaking his head. “It’s not like I’m living off in the mountains or something. If I want to know the time I just ask somebody.”“True enough,” I said.We were silent again for a while.I knew I should say something more, try to be kind to him, try to make him relax a little until we arrived at the hospital. But it had been five years since I saw him last. In the meanwhile he’d grown from nine to fourteen, and I’d gone from twenty to twenty-five. And that span of time had created a translucent barrier between us that was hard to traverse. Even when I had to say something, the right words just wouldn’t come out. And every time I hesitated, every time I swallowed back something I was about to say, my cousin looked at me with a slightly confused look on his face. His left ear tilted ever so slightly toward me.“What time is it now?” he asked me.“Ten twenty-nine,” I replied.It was ten thirty-two when the bus finally rolled into view. Visit Haruki Murakami's official website to read more from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.www.harukimurakami.com
Copyright © 2006 by Haruki Murakami. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
“A true miscellany [or] more like one of those overstuffed, career-spanning CD box sets…[But] the tales seem to speak with one, very seductive, voice. That voice, in each of these wildly varied excursions into the strange, dim territory of the self, says that someone named Haruki Murakami is still looking, quixotically, for something less fragile, less provisional than the usual accommodations we make do with on the road.” --Terrence Rafferty, New York Times Book Review"A virtuosic demonstration of Murakami's incredible range . . . thrilling, funny, sad, moving, scary--all at once. Since 1980, the year Haruki Murakami wrote his first short story, the Japanese author has been a walking definition of genius . . . He is a master of tone, and can manipulate a reader's curiosity at will, [and he] approaches the large subjects indirectly, through mood and bizarre occurrences, and always trusts his reader to be moved." --John Freeman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution"In this extraordinary new story collection by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, reality is ever in danger of breaking loose of its moorings . . . The inconsequential registers as significant in these wonderful stories as people struggle to figure out how to be, and what 'normal' means, if anything." --Joan Mellen, Baltimore Sun"Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a satisfying, entertaining collection [and] a solid introduction to the eclectic talents of this master storyteller." --Robert Allen Papinchak, The Seattle Times"Murakami effortlessly conjures modern fairy tales that dazzle . . . These stories are full of wisdom, wrenching us into understanding our innermost impulses by confronting us with the unexpected." --Geoffrey Bateman, Rocky Mountain News“Murakami’s writing perfectly captures the way surreal, even seemingly supernatural, encounters can subtly alter the terrain of everyday life.” --Sara Cardace, Washington Post Book World“Chance on this writer, and you’re lucky . . . Each of these tales is delightfully entertaining, a pleasure to read and to ponder at one’s leisure. And believe me, they do stick with you, creeping back into consciousness at the oddest moments, giving rise, quite out of the blue, to yet another surprising insight . . . Read through a selection or two, and you likely will be hooked [on] one of the most fascinating, playful literary minds around.” --Lee Makela, Cleveland Plain Dealer“Whimsical, magical, daring or sometimes played with the mute in the bell of the trumpet . . . the best of these linger far beyond the reading of them, creating an aura about the world that for many of us just wasn’t present before we read them. ” --Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune“As beautiful and metaphysical as anything Murakami, an artist who’s at the top of his form, has offered in the past . . . The tales in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman strike a gripping balance between the bizarre and wise [as] empirical reality is bluntly scrutinized, if not entirely undermined . . . He’s the rare sort of artist who not only creates uncanny landscapes but effortlessly ferries you through them.” --Dan Lopez, Time Out New York“Mysterious and evanescent . . . [The] stories in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman juxtapose the deeply bizarre with the mundane [as] Murakami explores the loneliness of spaghetti, man-eating cats, romantic alienation, and eyeless, cake-obsessed crows . . . [A] dexterous story collection that illustrates the range and vitality of the genre.” --Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly“Murakami’s first collection of stories in more than a decade once again demonstrates his fabulous talent for transporting readers and making ‘the world fade away’ . . . What shines in all of [these stories] is Murakami’s love for the open-ended mystery at the core of existence and his willingness to give himself up ‘to the flow’ in order to capture some of the magic in the mundane.” --Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science Monitor"A warning to new readers of Haruki Murakami: You will become addicted . . . [His] newest collection is as enigmatic and sublime as ever." --Jenna Krajeski, San Francisco Chronicle"Murakami's made from the DNA of Kafka, Gogol, Borges and Vonnegut. Like all these masters of metaphor, this writer slips through the silver membrane between life and dream as effortlessly as Alice through her looking glass . . . The meanings in [his] fiction are koi in a black pool. When it is time to be seen, up they rise, gold and gorgeous for one patient reader, cream and black and mysterious for the next." --Charles McNair, Paste"Engrossing . . . Although Murakami's style and deadpan humor are wonderfully distinctive, his emotional territory is more familiar--remorse, unresolved confusion, sudden epiphanies--though heightened by the surreal . . . For all its peculiarity, Planet Murakami offers a recognisable landscape of our fears." --David Jays, Observer"A beguiling collection that shows off Murakami's bold inventiveness and deep compassion." --Siobhan Murphy, Metro"Sharp but humane [and] as unforgettable as it is untypical." --Hugo Barnacle, New Statesman"Marvelous . . . These stories are a joy for [Murakami's] readers . . . Their beauty lies in their ephemeral and incantatory qualities and in his uncanny ability to tap into a sort of collective unconscious." --Lily Tuck, Publishers Weekly (signature review)"An intimate pleasure." --Ruth Scurr, The Times (London)"Murakami's matchless gift for making the unconvential and even the surreal inviting and gratifying creates hard little narrative gems . . . A superlative display of a great writer's wares. Absolutely essential." --Kirkus"Readers who fear the short story, particularly by writers with a high literary reputation, need to set hesitations aside here. Murakami is an open-armed, hospitable short story writer [with] a greatly appealing and embracing personal narrative voice . . . The beauty of the author's prose style seals every story's sharp delivery." --Brad Hooper, Booklist"[Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman] will undoubtedly confirm his reputation as literature's answer to David Lynch." --Jonathan Ellis, Times Literary Supplement (London)

About

From the surreal to the mundane, twenty-four stories that “show Murukami at his dynamic, organic best” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). 

"A warning to new readers of Haruki Murakami: You will become addicted.... His newest collection is as enigmatic and sublime as ever." —San Francisco Chronicle

Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit Murakami’s ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and entertaining.

Awards

  • WINNER | 2007
    Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize
  • SELECTION | 2007
    ALA Notable Book

Excerpt

Blind Willow, Sleeping WomanWhen I closed my eyes, the scent of the wind wafted up toward me. A May wind, swelling up like a piece of fruit, with a rough outer skin, slimy flesh, dozens of seeds. The flesh split open in midair, spraying seeds like gentle buckshot into the bare skin of my arms, leaving behind a faint trace of pain.“What time is it?” my cousin asked me. About eight inches shorter than me, he had to look up when he talked.I glanced at my watch. “Ten twenty.”“Does that watch tell good time?”“Yeah, I think so.”My cousin grabbed my wrist to look at the watch. His slim, smooth fingers were surprisingly strong. “Did it cost a lot?”“No, it’s pretty cheap,” I said, glancing again at the timetable.No response.My cousin looked confused. The white teeth between his parted lips looked like bones that had atrophied.“It’s pretty cheap,” I said, looking right at him, carefully repeating the words. “It’s pretty cheap, but it keeps good time.”My cousin nodded silently. My cousin can’t hear well out of his right ear. Soon after he went into elementary school he was hit by a baseball and it screwed up his hearing. That doesn’t keep him from functioning normally most of the time. He attends a regular school, leads an entirely normal life. In his classroom, he always sits in the front row, on the right, so he can keep his left ear toward the teacher. And his grades aren’t so bad. The thing is, though, he goes through periods when he can hear sounds pretty well, and periods when he can’t. It’s cyclical, like the tides. And sometimes, maybe twice a year, he can barely hear anything out of either ear. It’s like the silence in his right ear deepens to the point where it crushes out any sound on the left side. When that happens, ordinary life goes out the window and he has to take some time off from school. The doctors are basi- cally stumped. They’ve never seen a case like it, so there’s nothing they can do.“Just because a watch is expensive doesn’t mean it’s accurate,” my cousin said, as if trying to convince himself. “I used to have a pretty expensive watch, but it was always off. I got it when I started junior high, but I lost it a year later. Since then I’ve gone without a watch. They won’t buy me a new one.”“Must be tough to get along without one,” I said.“What?” he asked.“Isn’t it hard to get along without a watch?” I repeated, looking right at him.“No, it isn’t,” he replied, shaking his head. “It’s not like I’m living off in the mountains or something. If I want to know the time I just ask somebody.”“True enough,” I said.We were silent again for a while.I knew I should say something more, try to be kind to him, try to make him relax a little until we arrived at the hospital. But it had been five years since I saw him last. In the meanwhile he’d grown from nine to fourteen, and I’d gone from twenty to twenty-five. And that span of time had created a translucent barrier between us that was hard to traverse. Even when I had to say something, the right words just wouldn’t come out. And every time I hesitated, every time I swallowed back something I was about to say, my cousin looked at me with a slightly confused look on his face. His left ear tilted ever so slightly toward me.“What time is it now?” he asked me.“Ten twenty-nine,” I replied.It was ten thirty-two when the bus finally rolled into view. Visit Haruki Murakami's official website to read more from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.www.harukimurakami.com
Copyright © 2006 by Haruki Murakami. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise

“A true miscellany [or] more like one of those overstuffed, career-spanning CD box sets…[But] the tales seem to speak with one, very seductive, voice. That voice, in each of these wildly varied excursions into the strange, dim territory of the self, says that someone named Haruki Murakami is still looking, quixotically, for something less fragile, less provisional than the usual accommodations we make do with on the road.” --Terrence Rafferty, New York Times Book Review"A virtuosic demonstration of Murakami's incredible range . . . thrilling, funny, sad, moving, scary--all at once. Since 1980, the year Haruki Murakami wrote his first short story, the Japanese author has been a walking definition of genius . . . He is a master of tone, and can manipulate a reader's curiosity at will, [and he] approaches the large subjects indirectly, through mood and bizarre occurrences, and always trusts his reader to be moved." --John Freeman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution"In this extraordinary new story collection by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, reality is ever in danger of breaking loose of its moorings . . . The inconsequential registers as significant in these wonderful stories as people struggle to figure out how to be, and what 'normal' means, if anything." --Joan Mellen, Baltimore Sun"Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is a satisfying, entertaining collection [and] a solid introduction to the eclectic talents of this master storyteller." --Robert Allen Papinchak, The Seattle Times"Murakami effortlessly conjures modern fairy tales that dazzle . . . These stories are full of wisdom, wrenching us into understanding our innermost impulses by confronting us with the unexpected." --Geoffrey Bateman, Rocky Mountain News“Murakami’s writing perfectly captures the way surreal, even seemingly supernatural, encounters can subtly alter the terrain of everyday life.” --Sara Cardace, Washington Post Book World“Chance on this writer, and you’re lucky . . . Each of these tales is delightfully entertaining, a pleasure to read and to ponder at one’s leisure. And believe me, they do stick with you, creeping back into consciousness at the oddest moments, giving rise, quite out of the blue, to yet another surprising insight . . . Read through a selection or two, and you likely will be hooked [on] one of the most fascinating, playful literary minds around.” --Lee Makela, Cleveland Plain Dealer“Whimsical, magical, daring or sometimes played with the mute in the bell of the trumpet . . . the best of these linger far beyond the reading of them, creating an aura about the world that for many of us just wasn’t present before we read them. ” --Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune“As beautiful and metaphysical as anything Murakami, an artist who’s at the top of his form, has offered in the past . . . The tales in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman strike a gripping balance between the bizarre and wise [as] empirical reality is bluntly scrutinized, if not entirely undermined . . . He’s the rare sort of artist who not only creates uncanny landscapes but effortlessly ferries you through them.” --Dan Lopez, Time Out New York“Mysterious and evanescent . . . [The] stories in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman juxtapose the deeply bizarre with the mundane [as] Murakami explores the loneliness of spaghetti, man-eating cats, romantic alienation, and eyeless, cake-obsessed crows . . . [A] dexterous story collection that illustrates the range and vitality of the genre.” --Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly“Murakami’s first collection of stories in more than a decade once again demonstrates his fabulous talent for transporting readers and making ‘the world fade away’ . . . What shines in all of [these stories] is Murakami’s love for the open-ended mystery at the core of existence and his willingness to give himself up ‘to the flow’ in order to capture some of the magic in the mundane.” --Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science Monitor"A warning to new readers of Haruki Murakami: You will become addicted . . . [His] newest collection is as enigmatic and sublime as ever." --Jenna Krajeski, San Francisco Chronicle"Murakami's made from the DNA of Kafka, Gogol, Borges and Vonnegut. Like all these masters of metaphor, this writer slips through the silver membrane between life and dream as effortlessly as Alice through her looking glass . . . The meanings in [his] fiction are koi in a black pool. When it is time to be seen, up they rise, gold and gorgeous for one patient reader, cream and black and mysterious for the next." --Charles McNair, Paste"Engrossing . . . Although Murakami's style and deadpan humor are wonderfully distinctive, his emotional territory is more familiar--remorse, unresolved confusion, sudden epiphanies--though heightened by the surreal . . . For all its peculiarity, Planet Murakami offers a recognisable landscape of our fears." --David Jays, Observer"A beguiling collection that shows off Murakami's bold inventiveness and deep compassion." --Siobhan Murphy, Metro"Sharp but humane [and] as unforgettable as it is untypical." --Hugo Barnacle, New Statesman"Marvelous . . . These stories are a joy for [Murakami's] readers . . . Their beauty lies in their ephemeral and incantatory qualities and in his uncanny ability to tap into a sort of collective unconscious." --Lily Tuck, Publishers Weekly (signature review)"An intimate pleasure." --Ruth Scurr, The Times (London)"Murakami's matchless gift for making the unconvential and even the surreal inviting and gratifying creates hard little narrative gems . . . A superlative display of a great writer's wares. Absolutely essential." --Kirkus"Readers who fear the short story, particularly by writers with a high literary reputation, need to set hesitations aside here. Murakami is an open-armed, hospitable short story writer [with] a greatly appealing and embracing personal narrative voice . . . The beauty of the author's prose style seals every story's sharp delivery." --Brad Hooper, Booklist"[Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman] will undoubtedly confirm his reputation as literature's answer to David Lynch." --Jonathan Ellis, Times Literary Supplement (London)

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