A Wild Sheep Chase

In this quirky novel from Japan, the unnamed 30-something narrator goes searching for his hidden friend, The Rat, and a magic sheep seemingly bent on world domination. Part satire, part mystery, the book dwells mostly on the protagonist's ruminations on personalities, events, and milieu. The British audio publisher has cast an American reader. Rupert Degas sounds like a likable East Coast grad student while impersonating the hero, giving the musings and descriptions dramatic and expressive force. In dialogue passages, however, he relies upon his skill with character voices, making them cartoonish. The Rat, for instance, sounds like Woody Allen. This approach seems to clash with the authorial voice, not to mention the Asian setting. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

October 1, 1989
Immensely popular in Japan, the author's first novel to be published here is a comic combination of disparate styles: a mock-hardboiled mystery, a metaphysical speculation and an ironic first-person account of an impossible quest. The narrator is a modern Japanese yuppie: divorced, in a mildly exciting relationship and a much less exciting job as an ad copywriter, he lives unexceptionally until a photograph throws his life into chaos. The snapshot, which he uses to illustrate a newsletter, shows a field of sheep with one unique crossbreed, and the picture is special enough to have attracted the attention of both the nomadic friend who sent it to him and a right-wing Mr. Big who, moribund, wants the source found before he dies. The Boss's henchman, a sleek, scary majordomo, gives the narrator one month to track it down, and the story that ensues is a postmodern detective novel in which dreams, hallucinations and a wild imagination are more important than actual clues. With the help of a fluid, slangy translation, Murakami emerges as a wholly original talent. $30,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.