All you need to know about Killing Commendatore, the hotly anticipated new novel by Haruki Murakami.
1. Haruki Murakami’s new novel, Killing Commendatore, will be published in NZ in October 2018.
2. The novel is a two-part story in one volume – Part 1: The Idea Made Visible and Part 2: The Shifting Metaphor.
3. The novel is centred on art and its creation. The story centres on a painter dealing with his separation from his wife. He goes to stay in a famous artist’s house and discovers a mysterious painting in the attic that shares the book’s title.
4. The subject of this painting is a scene from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, showing the killing of Donna Anna’s father (Il Commendatore, the captain of a group of knights) by Don Giovanni, but set in 7th-century Japan and painted in a traditional style.
5. Murakami’s stories vary widely in tone and style. This haunting and multi-layered novel is reminiscent of his masterpiece, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and takes his narrative art in new and exciting directions.
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