Killing Commendatore
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  • Published: 1 October 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784707330
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 704
  • RRP: $26.00

Killing Commendatore

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Oct 2019
EBook
9 Oct 2018
Audiobook
9 Oct 2018
Audio CD
6 Aug 2019
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The latest bewitching, kaleidoscopic novel from master storyteller Haruki Murakami, author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and 1Q84

*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*

We all live our lives carrying secrets we cannot disclose.

'Beguiling... Murakami is brilliant at folding the humdrum alongside the supernatural; finding the magic that's nested in life's quotidian details' Guardian

When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he holes up in the mountain home of a famous artist. The days drift by, spent painting, listening to music and drinking whiskey in the evenings. But then he discovers a strange painting in the attic and unintentionally begins a strange journey of self-discovery that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt and a haunted underworld.

A stunning work of imagination, Killing Commendatore is a surreal tale of love and loneliness, war and art.
  • Published: 1 October 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784707330
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 704
  • RRP: $26.00
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About the author

Haruki Murakami

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers’ award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami’s unique and addictive fictional universe.

Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to Absolutely On Music, and they also seep into his novels and short stories, providing quotidian moments in his otherwise freewheeling flights of imaginative inquiry. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Men Without Women, his distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring Murakami’s place as one of the world’s most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

portrait photo of Haruki Murakami

Also by Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
A Wild Sheep Chase
Dance Dance Dance
Desire
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Birthday Girl
South of the Border, West of the Sun
See all

Praise for Killing Commendatore

It’s safe to say that there’s no one like Murakami

Literary Review

Written in a simple, readable style that leaves you free to concentrate on the weirdness of the content… There is no other writer able to give us the fix that his unique qualities provide

Sunday Express

An immersive big-hearted new novel

Independent

Murakami’s reality has many sides; some plain, some fancy. Translators Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen capture every colour on this mind-altering palette. 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

Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times

Murakami keeps the reader gripped

The Week

I found it totally gripping with scarcely a dull page, the loose ends enhancing its mystery. An absorbing work by a great writer

Daily Express

In this novel, [Murakami] captures the creative process compellingly… The complex landscape that Murakami assembles in Killing Commendatore is a word portrait of the artist’s inner life

Times Literary Supplement

Expansive and intricate . . . touches on many of the themes familiar in Mr. Murakami’s novels: the mystery of romantic love, the weight of history, the transcendence of art, the search for elusive things just outside our grasp

New York Times

Wild, thrilling. . . Murakami is a master storyteller and he knows how to keep us hooked

Sunday Times

Rich, sprawling… Killing Commendatore is a… powerful, sustained meditation on how we engage with works of art

Daily Telegraph

Brilliant… Murakami is good company, that most precious of qualities in an author

Xan Brooks, Guardian

Murakami has produced a captivating novel, full of otherworldly detours and fascinating digressions

Jane Shilling, Daily Mail

One of the most influential novelists of his generation

Observer

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On design: Killing Commendatore

Suzanne Dean, creative director at Vintage, shares the creative process for designing the cover for Haruki Murakami’s latest novel.

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5 things to know about Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore

All you need to know about Killing Commendatore, the hotly anticipated new novel by Haruki Murakami.